The New York Times | Dot Earth blog
“Americans Polarized on Climate, Tuned Out on ‘Fracking’”
June 19, 2012

The New York Times’ Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin recently praised Sheril Kirshenbaum's work, specifically focusing on her analytical role as director of the University of Texas Energy Poll.

Revkin published on Dot Earth some UT Energy Poll results recently highlighted by Kirshenbaum from the poll's second release in March. In particular, the March the poll found that a large percentage of Americans have never heard of or don't know much about hydraulic fracturing (or 'fracking'), despite controversial debates on the subject.

Revkin had this to say about Kirsehnbaum and the poll: 

[Sheril Kirshenbaum] now directs the new University of Texas at Austin Energy Poll, which offers a valuable view of Americans’ attitudes on energy choices and climate concerns....I invited Kirshenbaum to sift the results from the second survey, conducted in March, for findings that she saw as most interesting or notable.

 

One that jumped out at me when I first saw the poll was the large majority of Americans who are either not familiar with (28 percent) or have never heard (35 percent) the terms hydraulic fracturing or fracking. It’s useful for those of us immersed daily in heated discussions on such energy issues to be reminded that, for most citizens, energy is not something you think about at all. Plug in, turn on and move on. This is why I keep saying that efforts to blame energy inertia on disinformation campaigns are a distraction from more profound causes.

 

As Nathan Lewis of the California Institute of Technology put it to me in 2007, moving the world to new energy norms “is not a new function we’re seeking. It’s a substitution. It’s not like NASA sending a man to the moon. It’s like finding a new way to send a man to the moon when Southwest Airlines is already flying there every hour handing out peanuts.”