A majority of registered voters support the Environmental Protection Agency's recently announced proposal calling for a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions from power plants, according to the results of a new Public Policy Polling survey.
The poll found that 53 percent of voters support requiring power plants to cut carbon pollution by up to 30 percent, while 35 percent oppose the proposal. Another 12 percent said they are not sure.
The EPA said the proposal would represent the first reduction in carbon pollution from existing power plants, the single largest source of carbon pollution in the United States.
Additionally, PPP said the poll results suggest that voters don't have much tolerance for climate change skeptics when it comes to the 2016 presidential race.
Forty-six percent of voters said they would be unwilling to support a presidential candidate that does not believe global warming was being caused by human activity, while 38 percent said they would be willing to vote for such a candidate.
Among independent voters, just 29 percent said they'd be willing to support a candidate who doesn't believe global warming is caused by human activity.
"The politics on this issue are pretty clear," PPP Director Tom Jensen said. "Voters believe in man-made climate change, and they support President Obama's new initiative to help deal with it."
He added, "Republicans risk putting themselves in an even deeper hole with independent voters by continuing to express their skepticism, and it has the potential to help cost them yet another Presidential election in 2016."
A separate Washington Post-ABC News survey that did mention the specific EPA proposal found that 70 percent of Americans think the federal government should limit the release of greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort to reduce global warming.
However, support for the government limiting the release of greenhouse gases drops to 63 percent if the plan were to raise the respondent's monthly energy expenses by 20 dollars a month.
The PPP poll of 735 registered voters was conducted on June 2nd and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. The survey was conducted on behalf of Americans United for Change, a liberal advocacy group.
The Washington Post-ABC News survey of 1,002 adults was conducted May 29th through June 1st and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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