Each presidential election cycle the media comes around to the idea that this is the year that voters are going to punish 'anti-environmental' candidates. In the past (the argument goes), the American people wanted a clean environment, but didn't consider it a high enough priority to decide an election. And like clockwork, we're being warned this year that global warming changes everything -- that a broad swath of voters is beginning to realize that life as we know it is at stake, and will vote accordingly. The only problem is these skunk-at-the-picnic polls that make it impossible to believe:

Forty-eight percent of Americans are unwilling to spend even a penny more in gasoline taxes to help reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new nationwide survey released today by the National Center for Public Policy Research.

The poll found just 18% of Americans are willing to pay 50 cents or more in additional taxes per gallon of gas to reduce greenhouse emissions. U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-MI), chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, has called for a 50 cent per gallon increase in the gas tax.

If half of all Americans are unwilling to pay anything more to combat global warming, and nearly 20 percent more are willing to spend only a small amount, how seriously do Americans view the problem? It seems that the appetite for a drastic tax increase continues to rest where it always has: with a relatively small activist minority.

HT: ShopFloor