Water Pollution Remains the Top Environmental Concern in the U.S. –

The front of the March on Washington for action on climate change: Glynn Wilson

Public Opinion Analysis –
By Glynn Wilson –

The American public is not worried enough about the state of the natural environment to save themselves or the world.

That’s not the headline on the latest Gallup poll reporting concern for environmental issues in the United States, but perhaps it should be.

There is a hint contained in the research on why not enough people are concerned: Democrats and independents are concerned about the state of the environment; Republicans don’t give a damn. That’s the bottom line, and it is a problem.

The highest level of concern by the most Americans when asked about specific issues shows that 56 percent of Americans worry “a great deal” about water pollution, including whether our drinking water is clean, and 53 percent worry about water quality in rivers, lakes and streams.

To be fair, although it is not highlighted in Gallup’s reporting on its own data, if you combine the numbers for those who worry “a great deal” about the problems and those who worry “a fair amount,” it turns out that 80 percent of Americans are worried about pollution of drinking water and 83 percent are concerned about pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs.

But only 39 percent of Republicans care about clean drinking water, and only 40 percent are concerned about pollution of surface water sources.

Clearly the major American corporations engaged in polluting the environment have been successful at reaching Republican voters, along with the Republican politicians who are convinced they can raise political cash and get Republican votes by downplaying threats to the environment, usually on economic grounds.

The latest data also shows that since President Joe Biden was sworn in and began reversing the anti-environment policies of the Trump administration, concern about the future of the environment among Democrats is going down.

In 2020, the last year of the Trump presidency, 74 percent of Democrats and only 14 percent of Republicans were concerned about global warming and climate change, for example. In 2021, only 68 percent of Democrats remain concerned, perhaps reflecting a shift by the Biden administration to reversed some of Trump’s anti-environmental policies, including rejoining the Paris climate agreement and rescinding the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Biden also ordered federal agencies to review more than 100 of the Trump administration’s policies that rolled back many of the Obama administration’s environmental regulations and signed an executive order calling on all federal agencies to take into account the effects of climate change on federal policies.

“As Biden continues to implement his environmental policy agenda, Democrats’ outlook may improve further,” Gallup’s analysts say. “Biden’s election has resulted in a 26-point increase in Democrats’ view that the quality of the environment is (going to get) better.”

Looking at the raw numbers, 65 percent of Americans worry a great deal or a fair amount about global warming and climate change, but only 14 percent of Republicans say they care.

About 71 percent of Americans are concerned somewhat about air pollution, but the Democrats make up 57 percent, while only 20 percent of Republicans care.

Around 72 percent of Americans are concerned to some extent about the loss of tropical rain forests, which have burned at an alarming rate in recent years, but that’s only 55 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of Republicans.

Close to 70 percent of Americans are concerned about the extinction of plant and animal species, but that’s only 51 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of Republicans.

“When it comes to environmental problems, Americans remain most concerned about two that have immediate and personal potential effects,” Gallup’s analysts say in the report. “For the past 20 years, worries about water pollution — both drinking water and bodies of water — have ranked at the top of the list. The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, laid bare the dangers of contaminated drinking water and no doubt sticks in the public’s minds.”

Forty-one percent of Americans rate the overall quality of the environment in the U.S. as “excellent” or “good,” while 59 percent say it is “only fair” or “poor.”

“The public’s lukewarm view of whether the quality of the environment is improving is similar to their current middling rating of it,” Gallup says. “In all, 42 percent of Americans say the quality of the environment is getting better, while 52 percent think it is getting worse.”

If the country and the world are going to get together enough to solve any of the pressing environmental problems we face, the news media is going to have to do a better job of telling people the stories so that the public becomes concerned enough to put pressure on policy makers to address these issues. Only the future of human life on planet Earth is at stake. Constant distractions on other issues will only get in the way of our future on this planet.

These findings, from Gallup’s annual Environment survey conducted March 1-15, are the latest data points in at least two decades of tracking concern about these environmental problems by the survey research company.