More than 70 percent of respondents to a New York Times/CBS News poll thought that producing energy was more important to President Bush than protecting the environment, while 55 percent of the respondents themselves thought it was more important to protect the environment. Only 12 percent (what were they smoking?) thought the environment was more important to Bush. More than 60 percent said Americans were being told there was an energy problem to give oil companies an excuse to charge more money. Seventy-two percent said it was necessary to take immediate steps to counter global warming, and more than half said the U.S. should abide by the Kyoto treaty on climate change, even though it wouldn’t impose mandatory emissions caps on China and India.
