Concern in the U.S. over environmental issues has been mounting over the last few decades, despite there being considerable political controversy over certain aspects. This broad survey from Gallup finds that, for the first time in many years, Americans have decreased their level of concern overall. The research also finds that, as in previous years, people in the U.S. show more concern over issues of pollution and drinking water, than they do about broader international issues such as global warming or climate change.

Based on a new Gallup survey conducted in March 2015, concern in America over environmental threats has eased compared to 2014 statistics. Though the numbers do fluctuate year to year, there has often been big upticks of concern, and 2014 was one such year when worries over major environmental issues spiked. Now, it appears that numbers reflecting concern have shrunk back to 2013 levels, with “Americans express[ing] the greatest worry about pollution of drinking water, and the least about global warming or climate change.” Gallup notes that, traditionally, Americans show much more concern over “proximate” threats, that is, threats to their immediate environment, as opposed to “longer-term threats such as global warming, the loss of rain forests, and plant and animal extinction.” They also note that “the amount Americans worry about the various threats tends to rise and recede in unison, with concern higher in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the revival of environmentalism, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s amid the economic boom.” Since these upswings, Americans’ worry about the environment has tended to recede, except for the 2014 surge.

Environmental issues are closely tied with politics in the U.S., and the researchers found that “the nature of the environmental agenda may indirectly be influencing Americans’ concern.” This “environmental agenda” is linked to partisan politics, and there is a political polarization over specific issues such as global warming. Though an interesting point from the survey is that “even as global warming has received greater attention as an environmental problem from politicians and the media in recent years, Americans’ worry about it is no higher now than when Gallup first asked about it in 1989.” For anyone familiar with U.S. politics, it is perhaps unsurprising that “Democrats worry more than Republicans about all of the issues.” Despite all these factors, the overall concern this year “remains on the low end of what Gallup has measured over the past 25 years.”

The author notes that since “Americans are less concerned about environmental matters in general, they may be less willing to support policy changes to make those regulations even tougher if they don’t perceive pollution and other environmental threats as imminent.” For animal advocates, this news is disappointing, but the findings of this study contain an important point relevant to a variety of campaigns. If advocates want to create change around global or international issues, we are likely to make better inroads if we can relate the macro picture to a local issue first. For example, though factory farming is a global issue in terms of scale and impact, in an American context it may be more fruitful to frame it as a local problem first.

Original Abstract:
Americans’ concern about several major environmental threats has eased after increasing last year. As in the past, Americans express the greatest worry about pollution of drinking water, and the least about global warming or climate change. The results are based on Gallup’s annual Environment survey, conducted March 5-8. Gallup trends on many of these items stretch back more than two decades. Last year’s increased worry has proved temporary, with the current level of worry on each of the problems back to about where it was in 2013. Despite ups and downs from year to year in the percentage worried about the various issues, the rank order of the environmental problems has remained fairly consistent over the decades. Americans express greater concern over more proximate threats — including pollution of drinking water, as well as pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs, and air pollution — than they do about longer-term threats such as global warming, the loss of rain forests, and plant and animal extinction.