Poll: Public strongly support Rudd’s ETS

Roy Morgan released a phone poll on perceptions of global warming and public approval levels of the CPRS legislation – it came with a relatively small sample size of 687 for an MoE that maxes out around the 3.7% mark, and which consisted of the population aged 14 or higher. The first question asked was interesting as the same question was also asked in 2006, 2008, May of 2009 and again last Wednesdasy/Thursday – giving us a look at how opinions have been changing over time.

While the view that the need to act on global warming is still, by far, the majority opinion on the issue, that majority opinion has been slowly eroding over time. The largest change in opinion however, has been in the proportion of the population that believe global warming “concerns are exaggerated” – having roughly doubled over the last 3 years.

Morgan also asked two additional questions on public perceptions of global warming. First up, whether people believe that carbon emissions are a contributor to global warming:

Again, the overwhelming majority of the population comes in on the Yes side. Those respondents that answered “Yes” were then asked an additional question:

60% of the total population believes carbon emissions are a major contributor to global warming, 17% are of the view that it’s a minor contributor, 6% can’t say while 17% of the population weren’t asked as they either answered “No” or “Can’t say” to the preceeding question.

This is interesting in that even though the proportion of the population that believe we need to act now to combat global warming has been decreasing, a clear majority of the population still have the strongest response – that carbon emissions are a major contributor to global warming.

The final question asked related to public views on the current CPRS legislation:

Again, a clear majority approve of the government acting on carbon emissions, but acting on it with this particular legislation before Parliament (although a large majority of this would probably have the same views for any piece of legislation packaged as reducing carbon emissions).

Also noteworthy is how 1 in 5 of the population are effectively undecided – even if they all broke towards the negative (which is pretty much impossible anyway), the government would still be holding the majority block of public opinion.

UPDATE:

There’s now some breakdowns by voting intention for the poll: