Somebody on Gristmill recently mentioned this study, I think. (Who are you, mysterious misremembered person? [‘Twas JMG!]) Anyway, it was a survey done with 1,200 or so adults. They were presented with three climate policy options:

1) “Standards” or “mandates”: The government tells companies exactly how they must generate electricity or manufacture vehicle fuel to achieve a cut in emissions.

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2) Emissions Tax: The government taxes companies for their greenhouse gas emissions.

3) Cap-and-Trade: The government imposes a cap on companies’ greenhouse gas emissions, but allows companies to trade permits – which represent the right to emit a certain amount of pollution.

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The results are … disheartening. The overwhelming response was: do whatever you want to those electricity companies, but don’t mess with our cars!

The study also found a surprising congeniality toward the dread “command and control” regulations:

Americans prefer standards, in which companies are told exactly what to do to curb emissions, over the other policies we investigated. A low-carbon standard for electricity generation was backed by 73 percent of respondents who were told it would cause a typical monthly bill to rise by $10. By contrast, a cap-and-trade scheme for power companies was backed by only 47 percent at this price point. This gives pause for thought, as cap-and-trade schemes feature in some bills currently being considered by the US Congress.

The one thing you’re never supposed to say about stuff like this is: Why the hell would we expect average American adults to know the first thing about effective climate policy? Where, in our vapid entertainment culture and personality-based TV news, would they learn about these things, much less obtain the tools by which to compare and analyze them?

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The whole exercise strikes me as meaningless. It just discovers what everyone already knows: Americans will support any government policy that sounds vaguely good as long as they don’t have to (visibly) pay for it.