Tag Archives: Pew

Americans overwhelmingly want clean energy and environmental protection —Pew

Climate Progress points out that a new Pew poll, “Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology”, shows that Public support for alternative energy transcends political barriers:
71% of Americans believe “This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.” And 59% believe that “strongly.”
Quoting from Pew’s summary:
In light of this diversity it is interesting to note a couple of areas where almost all of these groups agree. The first is on support for alternative energy. Overall, the public prioritizes developing alternative energy over expanding oil, coal, and natural gas by a 63-29 margin. And, as shown in the chart below, seven of Pew’s eight active typology groups support this position, including a whopping 40-point margin among the Main Street Republican group. Only the staunch conservatives (9 percent of the public) dissent from the rest. Conservatives usually act like progressive ideas have no purchase in “their” part of the political spectrum. These data suggest otherwise.
And no, conservatives are not the political type the south has the most disproportional percentage of: those would be Hard-Pressed Democrats and Disaffecteds.

And no, by “alternative energy” people don’t mean polluting biomass: 63% of Americans say “EPA needs to do more to hold polluters accountable and protect the air and water”. What Americans want is clean renewable energy: solar, wind, and hydrogen.

-jsq

Prison population decline due to recession

FacingSouth reports on TURNING THE LOCK-EM-UP TIDE: State prison populations decline for first time since 1972:
Locking people up in jails and prisons is expensive. State officials know this all too well: In a country that puts more people behind bars than any other — the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners — over 91% of the incarcerated are under state or local supervision.

The lock-’em-up approach to criminal justice that took off in the 1980s and ’90s may have helped a few political careers, but it has crushed state budgets: By 2008, states were spending over $50 billion a year on incarceration.

What else can you do?

But as Facing South has been reporting (see here and here), the Great Recession helped change that, pushing states to explore less expensive (and often more effective) options like alternative sentences for non-violent offenders and streamlining probation and parole.

Today, the Pew Center has released a report showing the shift in approach is bearing fruit: For the first time in 38 years, state prison populations are in decline.

Georgia, on the other hand, increased its prison population by 1.6%. Maybe instead of making massive cuts in education, Georgia could do something about the prison problem.