One of the most popular American publications - TIME - states that the majority of US residents do not support the country's new president, Donald Trump, in his actions regarding environmental protection and combating climate change.
Even before Trump was elected president of the United States, many media outlets cited his numerous quotes in which the future American president, contrary to numerous facts (including from the scientific community), spoke very frivolously and/or negatively on climate change issues. Trump's refusal to recognize the significance of this problem directly contradicts the position of Barack Obama and his many steps aimed at improving the environmental situation. As a result, during the 3 weeks of his presidency, Trump has already taken a number of actions that caused obvious discontent among environmentalists: he approved the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines (which was previously blocked by Obama, and now provoked mass protests among the population), went against energy policy adopted during the Obama years (two of his four measures have already passed the US Senate).
Senator Brian Schatz of the District of Hawaii, a well-known US environmental activist, believes that Trump and his supporters "did it exactly as badly as people feared it would." Senator Steve Daines, who sits on the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, echoes him: “President Obama's energy policy has lost its meaning. President Trump is putting forward an overarching plan to get more energy generated in America."
Additional confirmation of these sentiments are the results of a recent survey of US residents, conducted by experts from the University of Quinnipiac (Quinnipiac University). According to them:
- 72% of Americans are "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" with climate change. And only 17% believe that the US is doing enough to combat climate change.
- 50% - against the resumption of pipeline construction (Keystone XL and Dakota Access), 40% - "for". Here, opinions were divided almost equally (one of the arguments of Trump's supporters is the creation of new jobs in the country for these projects).
- 61% are against the elimination of rules aimed at combating climate change.
The survey was conducted from February 2 to February 6, 2017 among 1,155 people across the country, and its results stated a possible margin of error in the range of +/- 2.9 percentage points.
See also anekdotig:
- Newsletter: " Leonardo DiCaprio's environmental film 'Before the Flood' is now available for free " (November 3, 2016)
- Newsletter: " US Takes Historic Step in Combating Climate Change with Clean Energy Plan " (August 4, 2015)
- News: " Hawaii becomes first US state to 'ban' plastic bags " (July 12, 2015)