Drawing courtesy of ePolitix website
The most recent posting to this site, ‘Retirees Polled About the 2008 Presidential Election,’ contained something that, by far, outweighed the importance of the very interesting and fun comments about the political candidates. I am referring to the minor mention of the potentially worst thing that could happen to life on this planet and that it received, seemingly, the smallest amount of concern from those surveyed. What am I talking about? Why Global Climate Change (GCC), of course.
Because of the apparent tiny amount of concern by those surveyed, I was quite relieved when I came across another survey, which did seem that it would be much more representative of the general population, that indicated that GCC is of major importance to the voters surveyed.
Even though this second survey seemed most concerned with improving fuel-efficiency, the second survey’s comments by the Civil Society Institute’s (CSI)’s President and Founder, Pam Solo, should leave no doubt that she envisions a permanent solution to the GreenHouse Gas emissions problem.
For her comments, the survey, and more may be seen at either the CSI website: http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/ or one of CSI’s other websites: http://40mpg.org/
Realizing that the two surveys appeared to be in direct disagreement with each other and even though it didn’t refer to differences between surveys, it reminded me of a saying that was attributed to President Truman, regardless whether he actually said it or not. President Truman, who was referring to advice he would get from economists, was to have said, “Give me a one-armed economist. That way he could never say, ‘On the other hand…'”
I mentioned the Truman item, as the two surveys strongly indicate two completely different positions on the environment. I did not mean to infer that one position on a point is preferred and I presume that President Truman didn’t want just one position on the country’s economy, either.
Another potential explanation for the complete difference between the surveys might be the fact that if ‘Big Oil’ can ply universities with money to get them to have professors’ take the position that Global Climate Change is either not happening or that mankind is not making it worse, it is not a stretch to believe that surveys might, also, be biased. I grant you that it may not apply to the 2008 Presidential Election. Although, I have read “press releases,” that appeared to say one thing, but the writer was actually attacking another issue. For example, Mr. Steve Milloy, who is a FOX reporter, wrote the “press release,” which was to indicate worst CEO’s for, I think, 2006, He tried to justify adding them to his list by criticizing each CEO’s work to help their company take steps to address the carbon dioxide emissions problem, etc..
By the way, the term “press releases” in the previous paragraph were in quotation marks, as any journalist/reporter with money can post an article to a press release website. So, it comes down to this…Either the retirees of the 2008 Presidential survey have no regard for their children’s and grandchildren’s future lives, which I strongly doubt, or that survey is not representative of a true cross-section of the population. However, the survey should be correct for the corporate
and municipal retiree members including those from AT&T, IBM, Lucent, Merck, Nortel, Raytheon, SBC, States of California & New Jersey, TXU Energy, US West, Wachovia, Wyeth Labs and Verizon.
Now that I am getting down from my soapbox, please take a moment to review how Americans feel about the gas prices possibly rising to $4 a gallon and more by reading the survey and please visit any other item on the society’s website. It will be well worth it.
Websites: http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/
http://40mpg.org/