Americans remain pessimistic about the state of the environment and want prompt action taken to improve its health, according to the second annual ”America’s Report Card on the Environment”-a national public opinion survey conducted by the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University in collaboration with the Associated Press. ”The public’s overall pessimism and general desire for action has remained constant during the past year,” said Woods Institute senior fellow Jon A. Krosnick, the Frederic O. Glover Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Stanford, who designed the 2006 and 2007 surveys. ”However, Americans have significantly more negative views of business and of President Bush’s handling of the environment than they did a year ago.” The 2007 report card was based on a telephone survey of a representative national sample of 1,001 American adults, who were interviewed from Sept. 21 to Sept. 23. Pessimism and global warming The survey found that 52 percent of Americans expect the world’s natural environment to be in worse shape in 10 years than it is now, compared to 55 percent in 2006-a statistically insignificant difference, Krosnick said. An additional 8 percent said the environment is in ”poor” or ”very […]