President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the strongly negative reaction by some groups regarding that decision are focused mainly on trade-offs and questions about the data used in evaluating those trade-offs. …
As seen from Trump’s announcement and the reaction to it, there is certainly no universal consensus on the facts involved. And the average American is certainly not in a position to be able to carefully evaluate claims about the future impact of the accord on jobs, the budget, the climate and so forth.
What we do know is that Americans’ general attitudes are broadly sympathetic to both sides of the trade-off equation — the importance of jobs and the economy and the importance of the environment. CONT.
Frank Newport, Gallup