Environmental Economics

Oh, dear. Poll results of this general ilk have become a dime a dozen. And of course the subtext is CO2, leaving one to wonder how annual CO2 emissions can keep on climbing, or how the new Congress could ever have come to be.
Could it be that many respondents don’t actually care much about “voting for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change”? Could they be giving piously politically-correct answers rather than honest ones? After all, it costs nothing to do so.
Or could this be about, “no sacrifice is too large for somebody else to make, especially if that somebody else is to be those evil, wicked corporations” – corporations that many Times writers and plenty of humanities professors affect to despise even while as they help themselves to copious jet fuel, luxury goods and services, and other corporate output?
In other words, how does anyone imagine real voters would respond if and when their hypothetical votes had actual costs and consequences and not just hypothetical far-off benefits? Suppose they were priced out of their next frivolous jaunt off to Europe? Or regulated out of their next trip with the kids to Grandma’s? Or, perish the thought, out of the next hypercompetitive-sports junket – on the way to Harvard of course – for their precious snowflake of a 7-year-old?
Suppose the more shrill, supercilious “climate psychology” professors, or even climate scientists, were priced or regulated out of their endless “conference” junkets? Gosh, that would be the end of the world.
Enough supposing. Really now, do polls like this ever tell us anything useful, or do they exist only in some hypothetical cloud that makes no real-world, meatspace nevermind?