CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities Blog

Last week the Guardian reported on an opinion poll that found the American public ranking climate change lower in priority than almost any other nation included in the study.  We couldn’t even muster a majority (only 44% thought it should be a major focus) and delivered numbers that compared most closely with those of Iraq and the Palestinian Territories!

Of course, these (not-so-sleek) bar graphs should be taken with a grain of salt since public opinion polls can, as we all know, be tweaked in such a way that almost any result is possible.  It’s all about how the questions get asked, who is doing the asking and how the random pool of respondents gets selected.  However, the general pattern appears compatible with recent studies which have found the economy winning out over the environment for people across the U.S. (Gallup recently declared the scales tipped in this direction for the first time in 25 years and the notoriously green State of California has been cooling off on Climate Change as the hot issue).

Rather than wallowing in the frustration, cynicism and despondency so easily encouraged by these polls, we should understand that we’ve really only got our work cut out for us!  The economy and the environment are, in fact, inseperable issues and always have been.  The challenge is convincing so many Americans that this is the case, that we can’t choose between development and sustainability, that we need to find a way to fit both agendas together.