CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 23 (UPI) -- A new survey finds U.S. citizens are increasingly unhappy with oil and more willing to consider alternative energy sources.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey of 1,200 people also determined there's a growing concern about the effects of global warming -- but an apparent reluctance to pay to fight it.
"We're trying to understand what public policy in the U.S. should do to encourage new kinds of energy development or different patterns of energy consumption," political science Professor Stephen Ansolabehere, who conducted the survey, said.
Ansolabehere directed a similar survey in 2002 and found since then public preferences have remained fairly stable, but the percentage of people wishing to increase nuclear power use has grown from 28 percent to 35 percent. That increase, he said, is likely due to concern about global warming.
While those surveyed still had some doubts about nuclear power, they are more opposed to oil, which has dipped below nuclear as the least popular fuel source. In the 2007 survey, 74 percent wanted to decrease oil use, compared with 56 percent in 2002.
The survey's results were recently published by MIT's Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems.
