New data from St. Leo University shows regress in support for the Keystone XL Pipeline cancellation, and a majority of respondents taking a middle-of-the-road approach to climate change. The data provided by St. Leo was formulated by polling 1000 people nationally, and 500 people in the state of Florida. For the most part, the differences between the two are not far apart.
According to the press release by St. Leo, the study found that “Between 2021 and 2022 polling, support for canceling the Keystone Pipeline declined significantly. In March 2022, 38.3 percent of those polled nationally, strongly or somewhat approve of the cancellation of the pipeline, compared to 47 percent in February 2021, a decrease of 8.7 percentage points.” In Florida, the support dipped from 47.8 percent to 41.4 percent, a decrease of 6.4 percentage points.
When decisions are made based on the environment instead of Americans wallets, people start to take notice. It doesn’t appear to be the case that people do not think the environment isn’t important, but when it affects parent’s abilities to put food on the table, pay the rent or the mortgage, and put clothes on their children’s backs, people don’t care about their carbon footprint as much. The rising gas prices very well could be causing this type of response.
When it comes to climate change, however, most people have taken a moderate stance. While the moderate stance went down by a few percentage points, it is still by far the majority opinion. The moderate stance is this: “Global climate change is caused by a combination of human activity and nature.” This response is safe. Nobody really knows for sure. Interestingly enough though, the category of “I don’t believe global climate change is occurring” jumped almost 2 percentage points since February 2019 and is the highest jump since February of 2020.
