Becoming Less Green

It looks like Donald Trump, who believes the Northeast US could use a little global warming, is gaining support for his belief that everything is just fine with the environment.

That’s one takeaway from the latest version of Ketchum Purpose’s “Causes Americans Care About” survey released today.

It finds that concern for the environment has dropped from the Top Five causes that Americans care about.

The Omnicom unit found that only twenty-four percent of respondents rated concern for the environment as important, down 10 points from the 2017 survey.

Environmental concern fell to sixth place in Ketchum’s “cause landscape,” trailing animal welfare (No. 1 on the list at 41 percent), children’s education, hunger, disease research and disaster relief.

The poll comes on the same day that the Associated Press reported that the Trump Administration is moving forward on its plan to drill for oil and gas in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

That process will kick off tomorrow with a notice published in the Federal Register, which is entirely fitting for Team Trump.

April 22 is Earth Day. Drill, baby, drill.

The New York Times also gave major play today to a report in Nature that global warming has caused irreversible damage to the Great Barrier Relief, imperiling wildlife, billions of dollars in tourism and 70K jobs in Australia.

Scientists warn that if countries fail to adhere to the emission reduction goals of the Paris climate accord, the Great Barrier Reef will be gone 50 years from now.

Team Trump, meanwhile, may be playing a winning hand when it comes to scaling back environmental protection. Its constant repetition that regulations are job-killing burdens on the economy appears to have numbed people into submission.

The president will eventually leave the White House. His policies will have a long-term effect on the global environment.