In a recent poll, two-thirds of Americans say they accept climate change, and the vast majority say human activities cause it – but they aren’t very worried

Most Americans know the climate is changing, but they say they are just not that worried about it, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. And that is keeping the American public from demanding and getting the changes that are necessary to prevent global warming from reaching a crisis, according to climate and social scientists.

As top-level international negotiations to try to limit greenhouse gas emissions start later this month in Paris, the AP-NORC poll taken in mid-October shows about two out of three Americans accept global warming and the vast majority of those say human activities are at least part of the cause.

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However, fewer than one in four Americans are extremely or very worried about it, according the poll of 1,058 people. About one out of three Americans are moderately worried and the highest percentage of those polled — 38% — were not too worried or not at all worried.

Despite high-profile preaching by Pope Francis, only 36% of Americans see global warming as a moral issue, and only a quarter of those asked see it as a fairness issue, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

“The big deal is that climate has not been a voting issue of the American population,” said Dana Fisher, director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland. “If the American population were left to lead on the issue of climate, it’s just not going to happen.”

Linda Gebel, a 64-year-old retired bookkeeper who lives north of Minneapolis, has read up on global warming.

“Everybody’s life would be totally disrupted,” Gebel said. “It will cause famines and wars, huge problems. I don’t know why people wouldn’t be worried about it.”

And yet because she lives in the middle of the country – joking that she’ll be “the last one who will be submerged” – Gebel added she doesn’t “feel worried personally. I’m not sure this is going to happen in my lifetime, but I worry about my children. I worry about my grandchildren.”

The “lukewarm” feeling and lack of worry has been consistent in polling over the years, even as temperatures have risen, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

“The issue hasn’t quite boiled up enough so that people have put it on the top of things they want to focus on,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said.

White House science adviser John Holdren said climate contrarians emphasize how large the problem is, essentially telling people “the result [of warming] is too scary, so let’s not believe it”. He said these groups have been “incredibly effective in sowing doubt” about global warming.