The 24% problem

The impact of ignorance on public policy

From a recent poll from Rasmussen Reports:

The gap between Capitol Hill and Main Street is huge when it comes to the so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation being considered in Congress. So wide, in fact, that few voters even know what the proposed legislation is all about.

Given a choice of three options, just 24% of voters can correctly identify the cap-and-trade proposal as something that deals with environmental issues. A slightly higher number (29%) believe the proposal has something to do with regulating Wall Street while 17% think the term applies to health care reform. A plurality (30%) have no idea.

This illustrates so well just why education is important to the success of any democracy. When we make collective decisions, they should be informed decisions. When we press our representatives to take one stance or another, we should press them with informed opinions; not ignorance.

The science is solid; anthropogenic greenhouse gases, especially CO₂, are responsible for a continued global temperature increase since the mid-20th century, and unless action is taken we can expect increasing negative environmental, economic and public health effects because of it. Given those facts, a carbon cap and trade bill is something every American should be for. It is a highly efficient market-based solution with a proven track record.

Remember when acid rain was all over the news? Have you noticed how nobody even talks about it anymore? That's because the 1990 Clean Air Act passed by the Congress instituted a cap and trade programme for reducing SO₂ emissions, resulting in a 40% drop in SO₂ emissions and a 65% drop in acid rain levels. In 2007, total SO₂ emissions were so low they actually met the programme's long-term goal three years before the 2010 statutory deadline; and the EPA estimates that when that 2010 deadline elapses the programme will have cost only ¼ of what was originally predicted.¹

Cap and trade has been a resounding success that has exceeded our highest expectations with negligible interference in the market and subterranean cost to taxpayers. It works so well, it is practically the textbook definition of a good idea. But with only 24% who even know that cap and trade is even something that deals with environmental issues, how can we be expected to collectively make a rational, informed decision?

Ignorance is like poison to democracy. Thomas Jefferson knew this well. In a letter to George Wythe written in 1786, he pleaded:

Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

Yes, Virginia, cap and trade works. It works really well, in fact. If we remain ignorant of these facts we will end up with a bad law. Every one of our big national decisions, in fact, are going to require good decision-making skills and informed opinions; otherwise we will end up with a series of bad laws meant to address a series of crucial national issues, leading to misgovernance at best and broken government at worst.

We don't have to resign ourselves to this fate; but in order to beat it, we need an educated populace.