Gallup’s annual environment survey, released in March, showed that Americans are worrying less this year about most environmental problems than they were a year ago, yet 55 percent still said they worried “a great deal” about drinking water pollution, compared with 60 percent a year ago. This compares to 32 percent who expressed concern about climate change, down from 34 percent.
“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,” the poll states. This has remained fairly constant throughout the survey’s 25-year history.