Results of a Gallup poll showed that Americans now no longer care much about environmental issues compared to 1989, despite multiple reports and studies presenting the negative effect of climate change.
The poll included telephone interviews with 1,025 participants aged 18 and above conducted from March 5 to 8 across 50 U.S. states, including the District of Columbia.
The majority of the people, or 63 percent, were worried about climate change 26 years ago. However, the percentage dropped by eight percent this year, indicating that some of the people no longer consider the impacts of climate change "a big deal." About 62 percent even said that they don't believe that global warming will pose a serious threat to their daily lives compared to 37 percent who are still believers.
Most of the Americans who participated in the poll stopped associating the weather changes to global warming and are now looking at the changing temperatures as a normal variation. Half of them felt that the winter this year is colder than the previous years, 18 percent said that it is warmer while 29 percent didn't notice any difference.
So what are the factors that are influencing the way Americans perceive climate change?
Almost half of the respondents blame the media for "exaggerating" the effects of global warming. Twenty-one percent, on the other hand, said that the media's depiction was accurate, while 35 percent felt that it was actually underrated, according to Bloomberg News.
Another factor that surfaced was the relationship of the U.S. economy to global warming perception. Researchers observed that the Americans tend to be more concerned about climate change when the economy is doing well, TIME reported.
On a positive note, even if the majority of Americans seem to care less, half of the poll respondents think that the overall quality of the environment is "excellent" or "good." Such rating is the highest since 2001.
