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	<title>Treehumper &#187; supermajority</title>
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	<description>for people who REALLY love the environment!</description>
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		<title>Poll: Majority, But Not Supermajority, Wants to Save the Planet</title>
		<link>http://treehumper.org/poll-majority-but-not-supermajority-want-to-save-the-planet/</link>
		<comments>http://treehumper.org/poll-majority-but-not-supermajority-want-to-save-the-planet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:12:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>The Lorax</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Broken News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[funny]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[massachusetts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supermajority]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A new poll of more than 5,000 people from around the country found that only a majority actually care about protecting the environment. Without the required supermajority, though, it will be impossible to move forward on all planet-saving measures.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3>New supermajority thingy is &#8220;annoying&#8221;, say environmental groups.</h3>
<div id="attachment_509" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 540px"><img class="size-large wp-image-509" src="http://treehumper.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Slide1-530x397.jpg" alt="Clearly, this isn't enough to actually do anything for the environment." width="530" height="397" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Clearly, this isn&#39;t enough to actually do anything for the environment.</p></div>
<p>A new poll of more than 5,000 people from around the country found that only a majority actually care about protecting the environment. Without the required supermajority, though, it will be impossible to move forward on all planet-saving measures.<span id="more-507"></span></p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really a shame that we could only get 59 percent,&#8221; said Amy Wilson, of South Bend, Indiana. &#8220;That only represents, what, maybe 175 million people or something? Obviously with such a small amount of people who care about the environment it will be completely unreasonable to actually do things like stop emitting greenhouse gases or reduce the amounts of dangerous chemicals in plastic bottles.&#8221;</p>
<p>The rules requiring a supermajority of the country to care about something in order to actually do it are not found anywhere in the Constitution. Strangely, a poll from 2007 found that more than 85 percent of the country doesn&#8217;t know that and wouldn&#8217;t want to change the non-existent rules.</p>
<p>In a blog post on his popular polling and policy site fivethirtyeight.com, analyst Nate Silver wrote that the environment poll numbers &#8220;seem robust enough to be accurate. I ran a simulation 10,000 times and came out with a supermajority who wanted to save the world only 279 times, meaning there is a very high chance the numbers are right and we&#8217;re going to go ahead and kill off thousands of species of animals, raise sea levels until coastal areas are under water and acidify the oceans until they become all but uninhabitable.&#8221;</p>
<p>Tom Willoughby, of Houston, said he participated in the poll and voted against environmental action. &#8220;I&#8217;m glad the supermajority rules are in place,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Without them, we would get far too many things done. C&#8217;mon, just having more than half the country want something should never be enough to actually do it. Am I right?&#8221;</p>
<p>A sub-analysis of the poll results also found a surprising number of idiots in Massachusetts.</p>
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