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Factoids-Protests Worldwide over Global Warming
By: Jon Dougal - Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Source: Various
A September survey of 800 registered voters by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University found that 79% favored stronger environmental standards, but only 22% said environmental concerns have played a major role in determining for whom they voted.
In focus groups, voters told pollsters they see the environment as a long-term problem that cannot compare in urgency to immediate concerns such as jobs, health care or taxes.
"Global warming is an issue that has a certain level of interest, but it's not as high on most people's radar screen as something that is more visible every day," said University of Minnesota history professor Roland Guyotte, who has studied protests in the U.S.
Environmental protests have had an effect in the past, he said. The Earth Day events of 1970, which involved an estimated 20 million demonstrators and thousands of schools and communities, helped lead to the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Protest organizers want Bush to sign on to the Kyoto Agreements, adopted in 1997 and ratified by 140 countries. The agreements call on the top 35 industrialized nations to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to 5.2% below their 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.
The United States has refused to ratify the agreement, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and lacks restrictions on emissions by emerging economies such as China and India.
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