Environmental concerns dip in US

Concern over climate change and a handful of other environmental issues has fallen from last year after generally increasing the previous several years, according to a new poll.

{mosads}Since 2014, the percentage of Americans who have a “great deal” of concern about air pollution and the loss of tropical rain forests has fallen 8 percentage points each, according to Gallup’s annual survey of top environmental concerns.

Concern over pollution of drinking water, consistently a top response, has fallen 5 percentage points, from 60 percent to 55 percent, according to Gallup, while the percentage worried about pollution of bodies of water like rivers and lakes, and the extinction of animals and plants has fallen 6 percentage points and 5 percentage points, respectively.

Global warming or climate change worries have ticked down just 2 percentage points, though the issue remains last among the other concerns on the list, with less than a third of Americans, 32 percent, considering it a major problem.

Worries over nearly all of the environmental issues polled by Gallup have fallen across political parties since 2000, with double-digit drops among Republicans and Democrats for water pollution, air pollution and loss of tropical rain forests. Concern over climate change is up since 2000 among Democrats, by 4 percentage points.

Most of the issues on the poll remain near record lows reached in 2010 and 2011.

The survey of 1,025 U.S. adults was conducted March 5-8 via landlines and cellphones with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.