Scientific American: “The latest UT Energy Poll released this morning reveals that U.S. attitudes on climate change have shifted significantly – and not just in the ways you might expect. Seventy-six percent of Americans now say that climate change is occurring–an increase from 68 percent just one year ago. Further, only 14 percent say it’s not, compared with 22% when we first asked the question in the Spring of 2012.”
Going deeper inside the numbers reveals bad news for Alaska. The top four explanations people give for the causes of global warming are deforestation, oil, coal, and natural gas. That is most of what Alaskans were expected to use to fuel our economy when it became a state.
If Americans are coalescing behind the idea that global warming is happening, it is a threat, and these are the primary causes, don’t expect to see the federal government make any more of Alaska’s resources available for development, regardless of who is elected President in 2016.
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Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
