Seriously now. Polls like this are absolutely meaningless.
The opening sentence of this piece exposes its conceit: "Poll after poll show that citizens of the Western world want more renewable power and are willing to pay for it. So whats the hold-up?"
Perhaps reality. If any of this were the least bit true, we wouldn't need government prodding the energy marketplace into making these changes. It already would have happened. The only purpose of polls like this is to provide political cover for what politicians want to impose.
Polls about what people say they are hypothetically willing to pay are absolutely meaningless. Is it really a surprise that the majority of people will respond with a politically/ecologically correct answer to a poll that when that answer to a hypothetical question costs them absolutely nothing? You might as well ask if people are in favor of clubbing baby harp seals. I'm sure they'd say they'd be happy to pay higher taxes to prevent that too.
Talk is cheap. It's what people actually do with their money that counts.
But don't just believe me. The President's energy policy has always been about making energy more expensive; He and his energy secretary are on the record favoring $8/gallon gasoline. (And if the goal is to get people to use less of it, then this is the correct policy) And yet, what is one of the biggest election year issues right now? $4 gasoline, and that same President says "I want gas prices lower because they hurt families; because I meet folks every day who have to drive a long way to get to work and them filling up this gas tank gets more and more painful, and its a tax out of their pocketbooks, out of their paychecks, and a lot of folks are already operating on the margins right now.
So why is he lying when all your polls tell us that everyone doesn't mind higher energy costs?
I guess he hasn't seen all your polls. People really want higher energy prices! No wonder he's going to lose. He's not touting his own supposedly popular policy!
