Canadians trust Greens more than any other party to deal with climate change
Canadians trust the Green Party more than any other to deal with climate change, according to a new poll by Angus Reid Strategies published April 12, 2007. More than one third of Canadian respondents say that the Greens are best suited to develop effective global warming legislation. See www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/view...
In your view, which of the federal parties is best suited to develop effective global warming legislation?
Green . . . . . . . . 34%
Conservative . . . . .26%
Liberal . . . . . . . 18%
NDP . . . . . . . . . 15%
Bloc . . . . . . . . .3%
Source: Angus Reid Strategies. Online interviews with 3,698 Canadian adults, Mar 6-19, 2007. Margin of error is 1.6%.
A poll by Strategic Counsel on January 17 with a similar question put the second party as the Liberals (see Greens far Ahead of all other Parties on Environment According to Canadians
http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/1163
the results of the Strategic Counsel were
Green Party . 27%
Liberal . . . . 16%
Conservative 12%
NDP . . . . . . .9%
Bloc . . . . . . 2%
- Jim Harris's blog
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Comments
26% for conservative????
I find it odd to see the conservatives score so highly??? After what they have done with Kyoto. Very strange.
Stéphane Bordeleau
Le paradis est ici!
Yes it is very strange
Yes Stéphane it is very strange that the Conservatives are second.
Jim
Conservative's image is improved
Jim and Stephane,
I believe what you are seeing is the enormous impact of John Baird as new Environment Minister. He is a high profile minister with a strong reputation in the Ottawa region and hence easy access to the national press. He says that the Conservatives have "received the message". The Greens know that the message was loud and clear 10-15 years ago. I think the public is beginning to credit the Greens with being the professionals on the environment...and the other guys are the amateurs. Keeping the public focussed on this theme will not be easy. The trouble is that Conservatives and Liberals have a history of being "gifted amateurs" on every subject...and they still get elected, mainly because of their election war chests.
Leo
other reasons
I think that there are two other things that contribute to the high rating for Conservatives, both of which are misguided, IMHO.
1. People who support the Conservatives so completely, to a point where ANYTHING the Conservatives do is fine with them. Some people talk a lot about how great a party is, without really knowing what their policies are.
2. There are, sadly, quite a few people who stubbornly refuse to believe that humans have any impact on the climate, or that global warming is occurring at all. For these people, a set of policies that is in line with this denial is more appealing than a set of policies that recognizes the truth.
Let's hope we can reach some of these folks!
Alina Abbott
Candidate nominee
Chatham-Kent-Essex
Conservatives on climate change.
The reason the Conservatives are second to the Greens in terms of confidence in terms of Climate Change is because Canadians want action on climate change which does not harm the economy. So while they may trust the Greens more with Climate change they do not trust the Greens with the ecomomy. At the same time they have less trust in the Conservatives with Climate change but have more trust with them on the economy. The Liberals and the NDP on the other hand now have little credibility on Climate change, since the Liberals signed Kyoto and they and the NDP did nothing to implement it.
All Canadian political parties, including the Greens, are guilty of not being up front with Canadians on the actual costs of meeting both short term Kyoto Targets. The cost of meeting Kyoto is now hidden by using terms like Carbon Credits and taxes which the average Canadian has little understanding.
The actual worldwide cost of meeting long term Kyoto targets has been estimated at $26 Trillion(US) over 50 years ( %2 GDP Stern Report) . (Reference: GreenHouse Gas and CO2 Mitigation Science and Technology, M Halman and Meyer Steinberg , Lewis Publishers, 1999).
The Canadian portion could easily be $400B(US). Any rapid GHG reduction plan that puts significant additional costs on Canadian Industry in comparison with US Industry will increase the price of Canadian products and exports to the US and impact Canadian jobs.
Would you vote for a party that may put your job at risk?
D McMaster, Ottawa
Some of us don't believe there is a long-term "cost" to Kyoto
Some of us don't believe there is a long-term "cost" to Kyoto, only a short-term transition. We currently have an energy inefficient economy, and this inefficiency gap is making Canada less competitive than countries that have moved forward more quickly on energy efficiency.
All transitions have transition costs, and all major innovation has and will always require transformative changes in the economy. Obviously we need to be up-front on this, but this is an entirely different suggestion than saying that having a low-carbon energy efficient economy could somehow be a "cost" rather than a savings.
Yes, there will be people who will have to transition to new jobs. This was the case when the straw bale and horseshoe industry was largely decimated by the introduction of the automobile, and will be the case when we move to the next progression in our economy. North America largely gave up participation in the automobile sector about a decade ago as they refused to move to smaller more efficient vehicles and hybrids when their foreign competitors did (and in fact actively killed the Electric Car and low emission standards among other suicidal decisions).
While we need to provide tools for this transition (such as government funded retraining/etc), we can't allow protecting legacy jobs to be an excuse to stagnate the economy. These legacy jobs will go away -- our only choice in front of us is whether Canadians will have new jobs to transition to in Canada, or whether all those jobs will be in other countries.
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Russell McOrmond (Constituent, Ottawa South)
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