Americans Not As Dumb About The Environment As Journalists Think

This was an encouraging report (when you read a little further down).

According to this Harris Poll, Americans will screw the environment when the economy goes in the dumpster.  But a closer look at the report may say more about the research report than people's attitudes toward the environment. 

The researchers asked this question:

"What would you say is more important to your region: protecting the environment OR economic growth and development?"  The majority answered economic growth.

Well of course, if you ask someone to make a trade off, they make a trade off.  And any first year psychology student would remind you that, according to Maslow, people will choose jobs and food on the table when their future economic security is threatened.   

What would be really interesting is to see the data that they refer to in their summary:

"Also, most people do not see the hard tradeoff between economic development and protecting the environment: Many say we not only can do both of these but that we should be doing both, according to Harris."

That "most people do not see the hard tradeoff..." seems to be the big story to me. 

Americans, it appears, are not as dumb as the politicians, the press and maybe in this case, the researchers, seem to think.  Perhaps we can and do understand the complex issue of creating a sustainable economy and know that we're not playing  a zero sum game.