Which should be given a priority - environmental protection or economic growth and energy development?

It's kind of a trick question(s) when you think about it. Because the proper environmental protection was not in place the government is spending millions it can ill afford to spend in the oil leak cleanup. The livelihood of tens of thousands of people are affected and will be for a great long while. At any rate, while I feel constrained by the wording of the questions, I'd go with environmental protection because without that you've jeopardized the health of current and future generations, you've impacted biodiversity, you're spending time and energy being reactive (a clean up & hazardous waste disposal) instead of proactive (developing cleaner fuels).

As for the demographics: It is interesting that independents topped Democrats by that margin. A shake of the head regarding the Republicans. They must have those heads in the sand so deeply they haven't been able to pull them out yet. It's an "old school" response in a "new school" world. Our technology will not work for us unless we make it do so. Surely Republicans can be made to understand that if you've polluted the oceans inhabitants to the point you can't consume them that this would have severe consequences for our species, much less others.

It will be interesting to see how the parties handle the whole scene in upcoming election cycles.

Economic Development Vs Environmental Protection

Neither the Environment nor Economic growth should be put in front of one another. We are not talking about oil and water, in the sense that they cannot mix.

In fact, Sustainable Growth has been used by industry for decades. The proof is in the pudding, that sustainable growth works! Lumber companies now prefer to cut sensibly, instead of clear cutting an area. Selected trees are cut, while others are left to grow, new ones are planted in place of the felled trees. This way, the lumber companies will always have product to harvest.

This also minimizes, but does not completely eliminate erosion of soil, or habitat loss. However, it is much better than the alternative... clear cutting.

The fact is that Humans need to share this world, we are going to leave a footprint no matter what we do. However, minimizing that footprint will leave both us and the environment in a better condition.

To think that economics should be put on the back burner is just naive. Without economic growth, how will you become educated? Travel? How will humans learn about our world, and become better stewards of the earth, if we are all out of a job and starving??

It is a give and take relationship that Humans have with the environment. We need to find the right balance between give and take.

if environment is protected all sector will be nicely run and can produce the desired result which ultimately help to increase to produce the good products and if so then economic will increase and development held so environmental protection more important than economic development

We've have already almost 7 billion human beings on this Earth all wanting the American way of life,THX in no small part of cheap T.V.s being sold though out the world, having a majority of them watching how life is in Beverly Hills,via the antics of the Kasdashian sisters On E! network or Real Housewives of New Jersey. When shows like that have fantasy meeting 'reality', in front of billions of third world peasants, I think this is nothing,but a complete prescription for ecological catastrophe for the whole planet & our species as well.

That's all what I'll state about what you're trying to ask!

At this level of generality, it's a false dichotomy, or else a no-brainer. The ONLY purpose of economic development is well-being, of which the environment is a part.

But the Q cannot sensibly be answered at this level; we need to deal with the trade-offs involved in individual cases on their merits.

I'm a free market person. Government does not operate as well as free enterprise. Energy development within the context of economic growth will yield innovation; environmental protection will yield the growth of government jobs/taxation that will inhibit all due to governmental regulation.

Why one and not the other? Cleaning up the environment CAN be economic growth. Finding alternative energy CAN create jobs. Cap and Trade...the republicans have been fighting that for their buddies in the mining and oil industry....see who get the campaign monies. And interesting, it was a republican who said BP should not be held accountable for the oil spill.

Good question Dana, I find the results of the Gallup poll to be both interesting and surprising, thanks for bringing them up. I would have though that amongst the public in general there would have been a leaning towards economic matters rather than environmental ones.

As to the question of which I think should be given priority, I have to say that I don’t know, there are valid reasons for focussing on both but it’s going to be difficult to do so.

I think as well, that it depends very much who you are and where you are. The global economic downturn has had a serious impact on many people in the developed world but in the developing world the majority of people have been unaffected (they have no wealth, no finance, no credit facilities, no investments, no banks etc).

Conversely, the effects of climate change have been most harshly felt in the less economically developed countries where crop failure, the spread of disease, desertification, loss of land, drought etc has impacted on hundreds of millions and has killed well over a million. In the developed nations we are sheltered against such impacts.

We also need to put the finances into context. The most detailed report into the economic costs of climate change was conducted by Lord Stern (The Stern Review) in which his team calculated the current financial cost was $600 billion a year.

Full report - http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/...

News Summary - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6098362.stm

We could probably negate many of the worsening impacts of climate change through the worldwide introduction of a greenhouse gas sequestration scheme – the physical removal of GHG’s at source and / or from the atmosphere, coupled with alternative energy solutions. Any such scheme on a global scale would not be cheap; price tags vary from $1 trillion to $12 trillion with most coming in at around the $3-4 trillion mark.

Therefore, had we established such a scheme 10 years ago it could well have paid for itself by now and we would no longer be debating about how to reduce our emissions

Another factor to consider is the compounding effects of climate change, both economically and environmentally. The longer we delay taking action the more it’s going to cost us.

There is no question in my mind that we need to do something as a matter of the utmost urgency. But at the same time, the state of the economy is also something which needs to be addressed with the utmost urgency.

If we don’t get the economy back on track then there will be massive global costs and implications, funding for any environmental schemes would continue to be hugely problematic. In this context it makes sense to delay funding environmental programmes until the economic crisis has, to some extent at least, been resolved.

However, if we hold back on tackling the climate change issue there are going to be continued and increasing economic impacts and any recovery is going to be further delayed.

So what do we do? It’s a catch 22 situation, we can’t realistically fix one problem without fixing the other. If we opt to focus attention on both the economy and the environment at the same time will this mean that resources are spread too thinly to have a significant impact. Alternatively, if we address both issues head-on we would have to make significant savings in other areas or raise revenue through increased taxes or other financial impediments, none of which would go down well with most people.

It’s a very difficult question to answer. I dare say that in 20 or 30 years time it will become clear where we should have focussed our attention.

An ideal solution, which isn’t going to happen, is for people to accept that some form of financial sacrifice would be necessary in order to tackle the issue of climate change. For example, a levy of some kind that equated to the equivalent of $1 per day per person, would generate $5 trillion within 2 years. This would be enough to make major inroads into tackling climate change, in doing so many millions of new jobs would be created and much of the money would be returned into the economy giving it a much needed boost.

Both of those questions are false dichotomies. There needs to be a balance in both approaches.

And we all know that a recent disaster evokes an emotional response to questions like that so I don't get your point. Are you trying to be an opportunist?

Do you really think those are well thought out questions?