Pumpjacks operating at the Kern River Oil Field, in Bakersfield, Calif. Americans shrug off environmental issues as partisan divide deepens

Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly polarized when it comes to environmental issues, according to a new poll.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday shows that Americans overall are less worried about environmental issues — pollution in drinking water, pollution to bodies of water, air pollution, extinction of plant and animal species, loss of tropical rain forests and global warming or climate change — than they were this time last year.


Overall, concerns over all six environmental issues mentioned have lessened since 2000.

But the poll also shows that the partisan divide on environmental issues has only grown wider in the past 15 years.

In 2000, 66 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans worried “a great deal” about air pollution, a difference of 16 percentage points. Today, that partisan gap has almost doubled to 31 percentage points.

The growing partisan divide is most evident when Americans were asked about global warming and climate change. In 2000, the number of Democrats who “worried a great deal” about climate change was only 19 percentage points more than Republicans who answered similarly. Now, 52 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans worry a great deal about climate change — a 39-point difference.

Environmental issues have been a focus of President Barack Obama’s tenure at the White House, particularly in his second term. The poll comes as the White House is quietly working to achieve the most far-reaching agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in history.

This Gallup poll was conducted between March 5-8 among 1,025 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.