Recent polling found that 63 percent of respondents said they supported the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES—a.k.a. Waxman-Markey). The poll, which was commissioned by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, was conducted in Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Nevada, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia—all considered swing states in the climate and clean energy debate.
The poll, which sampled likely 2010 voters, also found that 60 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for their senator if he or she supports a comprehensive federal clean energy and climate bill. Only 26 percent said they’d be less inclined to re-elect their senator for supporting ACES.
And, digging deeper into the Washington Post/ABC poll I mentioned briefly a while back, there’s a promising willingness to deal with higher energy costs in order to get our economy—and family budgets—off the fossil fuel roller coaster:
A substantial 41 percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll think proposed changes being developed by Congress and the Obama administration will raise their energy costs. Yet enough of them back those changes nonetheless to give the effort 57 percent support among all Americans.
Compared with an ABC/Post poll in 2001, the biggest changes are on power plants—an 11-point drop in support for building more fossil-fuel plants, from 62 percent eight years ago to 51 percent now; and a smaller 6-point rise in support for more nuclear plants, from 46 percent then to 52 percent now. However, NIMBY sentiments rule out in this case—support for nuclear power drops to 35 percent if the plant would be closer than 50 miles away.
Those pale, in any case, in comparison with longstanding support for developing more solar and wind power (91 percent) and fuel-efficiency standards (85 percent); for electric car technology(82 percent support) and for requiring more energy conservation in the commercial sector (78 percent) and by consumers (73 percent).
All of this is good news for climate legislation set to go before the Senate sometime late this year or in early 2010.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Caveman92223 under a Creative Commons license.
