If you had to choose between feeding either your son or your daughter, which one would you pick? Which do you give greater priority to, having gas in your car’s fuel tank or tires on your car’s wheels? Which is more important to have in your home, running water or electricity? Tough questions, right? Not only are they tough, they also present false dichotomies.
According to the most recent Gallup survey which looked for “answers” to one of the lamest polling questions of all time, Americans are more likely to say economic growth should take precedence over environmental protection when the two objectives conflict (53%) than to say the reverse (38%). The release of the survey results comes on the heels of another Gallup poll showing Americans’ declining concern for the environment.
According to Gallup, just under half of Democrats (49%) now believe “protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth.” The results show the lowest percentage of Democrats on record favoring the environment on this question. And at 22%, the percentage of Republicans favoring the environment also marks a new low.
The fundamental problem with this question as it has been framed by Gallup and other prominent pollsters for the last thirty to forty years is that it presents a false choice between protecting the environment and strengthening the economy.
As President Bill Clinton said back in 1992, “You don’t have to sacrifice environmental protection to get economic growth. The choice between jobs and environment is a false one: we can have both.”
In fact, at the core of much of the progressive environmental policy being promulgated today is the idea that environmental protection and economic stability are inextricably linked.
But as long as zero-sum survey questions with false dichotomies like this one are asked of people there will always be winners and losers. And because economy usually trumps all else, the environment will usually be portrayed as the “loser.” When in actuality, the real loser is the American public. A public who is led to believe they have to make a choice between the two.
I’m looking forward to the day when Gallup or any other polling organization calls me with this question. Although I already feel bad for the $8/hr. tele-pollster that’s going to have to put up with my rants.
Related posts:
- Gallup Poll: Americans’ Concern for Environment at 20 Year Low
- Poll Shows Unprecedented Global Concern About Climate Change
- Heinz Award Winners Announced, Focus on Environment
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Geoffrey Styles said:
"taking money out of our economy and never seeing it reinvested anywhere else in the economy"
Hardly what I supposed, though the key to whether this redistribution adds or subtracts value for the economy lies in how it's spent. If it's spent on things that create more value than it costs, then the economy benefits. If it's spent on something that is less efficient (in dollar terms, ignoring currently non-monetized externalities) than what it's replacing, then the economy suffers a cost in dollar terms. At this point, that's still the case for much of the green industry that must be subsidized in order to compete. In other words replacing something that generates electricity used by the rest of the economy for 5 cents/kWh with something else that raises that cost to 10 cents might make money for the folks building the hardware to do this, but it comes at a substantial cost to everyone else using electricity. And note that I haven't even mentioned the costs of administering such a system, which includes all of the political pork--often extremely inefficient uses of capital--that become part of the cost of getting it approved.
I'm not arguing that this might not be necessary for environmental and sustainability reasons. But arguing that we can shift money around in this way and somehow create greater overall net economic value--as we measure it today--is the essence of the free-lunch mentality that I was chiding.
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Fri, 2010-03-19 17:48 — Geoffrey Stylestbhurst said:
Free? Who said anything about free? I'm not so delusional to think that environmental protection is free, but without clean air, water and a healthy climate, it will matter less and less how our economy is doing. Our country's long-term economic survival is entirely dependent on the health and well-being of this planet and its inhabitants.The other thing that is important to mention -- and is all too often ignored -- is that "charging everyone for something that's been free since the discovery of fire" will create an influx of cash into industries and sectors that are now underdeveloped. The money won't just vanish. To suppose that we will just be taking money out of our economy and never seeing it reinvested anywhere else in the economy just gives more fodder to those who believe that protecting the environment and the economy are mutually exclusive endeavors.
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Fri, 2010-03-19 13:23 — tbhurstGeoffrey Styles said:
"environmental protection and economic stability are inextricably linked"
This is as much of an over-simplification as the "false choice" you decry. There's no free lunch, particularly with regard to greenhouse gases. We can't suddenly start charging everyone for something that's been free since the discovery of fire (the use of the atmospheric sink) and expect that this won't impose a cost on economy. In the long run it may lead to more efficient, sustainable and perhaps even more profitable ways of doing things; however, the transition won't be cheap, with the exception of some energy conservation and efficiency that will pay for itself. Telling people they can have their lunch and eat it too, all for free, is only going to lead to further disappointments and undermine support when we actually must face up to making tough trade-offs.
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Fri, 2010-03-19 13:07 — Geoffrey StylesPost new comment