I missed this last Friday, but better late than never. From Gallup Worry About U.S. Water, Air Pollution at Historical Lows. Looks like a double body-blow to admitted document thief Dr. Peter Gleick; Americans don’t share his top two concerns on water and climate, probably because of the actions of zealots like him.
These results are based on Gallup’s annual Environment poll, conducted March 8-11. The trends are part of a broader decline in worry about environmental threats documented in the poll.
Gallup asked Americans to say how much they worry about each of seven environmental problems. All show significantly less worry today than in 2000, when worry was at or near its high point for each item. The declines in concern about drinking-water pollution and air pollution are the largest for the problems included in this year’s poll.
More broadly, worry about the seven issues is below the historical average for each. Most of the trends date back to 1989.
Concern about these environmental problems is down among most major subgroups since 2000. Across the seven items, the percentage worried a great deal is down an average 16 percentage points among Republicans, 18 points among independents, and 13 points among Democrats.
Americans Worry Most About Water Contamination, Least About Global Warming
On a relative basis, Americans tend to worry more about environmental threats to the nation’s water supplies than those that affect other parts of the environment. The highest levels of worry this year are for contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, pollution of drinking water, and pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
Concern about global warming is lowest of the seven environmental issues tested, even though it is up slightly this year from last year.
The relative rank order of these environmental issues has generally been consistent over time, with water-related problems at the top and global warming at the bottom. In fact, the three water concerns in this year’s poll have ranked as the top three concerns over any other environmental problems nearly every time they have been asked since 1989. Pollution of drinking water has most often been the top concern.
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“TomB says:
April 17, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Looks like a double body-blow to admitted document thief Dr. Peter Gleick; Americans don’t share his top two concerns on water and climate, probably because of the actions of zealots like him.
That’s certainly part of it. But most is because it’s not something to worry about as much now. We’ve made great progress is cleaning up the environment and keeping it that way. Is everything perfect? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But I wish we’d stop downplaying the success we’ve achieved in fighting real pollution.”
But there’s the rub,TomB. You don’t get billions of taxpayer’s money to fight REAL pollution,not like the boggeyman of cAGW to find a totally harmless CO2.
I went to the Gallup site and downloaded the PDF file that listed the survey methodology and questions asked. This is the question on global warming had the poll-takers read a list of environmental problems, and then the respondents said how worried they were about each item.
My question: How would global warming rank if respondents weren’t given a list of items? Would it even be mentioned if the respondents were asked to list their top 3 environmental concerns?
The American people are being quite rational and observant.
After forty odd year so of intensive effort the end is in sight for our arduous effort to cleanse our environment. Thepopulace can see it too. Essentially every major river and lake has been cleansed. So our waters nationally are now clean.
But we are not yet finished with cleansing our Air. There are still metro areas with endemic polluted Air. That ii now only metro LosAngeles and metro Houston. But even there, the effort has already more then half way achieved our goals. For example, Los Angeles used to see 300-330 days of intense smog. Now it has only 20-30 days of much less intense smog. That is how far we have come. Houston has a plethora of refineries that have not yet cleaned up their act, but progress is happening there also.
Everywhere else the Air is basically clean. That does not mean that it is always pristine. If there is a fire in your neighborhood the Air quality will deteriorate for a short period, but metro wide it doesn’t happen. There are alsao occasional periods of a few hours that constittute a technical violation as well. But basically our Air is pretty good now ,across the USA ,and the people perceive that. When LA and Houston finish cleaning up, we can have our National Holiday and Celebration as the first country to have achieved both Clean Air and Clean Waters.
We are not far away and should be planning for the National Holiday recognizing our Victory for the Environment or VE Day.
O Olson re Suzuki: he was apoplectic in an interview this morning, he was spitting mad and barely able to talk. Loved it. He’ll be looking for more money from the Tides Foundation.
Interesting. I am worried about both (for my Health) not for “warming”.