Media inquiries: Véronique Rodman
vrodman@aei.org (202.862.4871)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 20, 2007

Shortly before Earth Day, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and public opinion expert Karlyn Bowman releases an updated, comprehensive collection of environmental and global warming data gleaned from surveys compiled by major U.S. pollsters. Among the highlights of this "Polls on the Environment and Global Warming" study:

• In most polls, the "environment" is a mid-to-low-range problem. In a January 2007 Pew poll, the issue ranked twentieth of twenty-three issues as a top priority for President Bush and Congress this year. In a March 2007 Gallup question, only 2 percent volunteered it as the nation's most important problem (35 percent spontaneously mentioned Iraq).
• Today, according to a survey by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 56 percent of Americans rate the overall quality of the environment in their local communities as excellent or good.  People are more pessimistic about the environment in the nation (32 percent call it excellent or good) and even more so about the environment in the world (17 percent rate it as excellent or good).
• Most Americans say that they are sympathetic to (but not active in) the environmental movement (49 percent in a March 2007 Gallup poll). Twenty-one percent say they are active, 23 percent neutral, and 5 percent unsympathetic.
• Seventy percent in a 2006 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll said improving the environment did not have to conflict with economic growth (25 percent said it did have to conflict).
• Global warming is not the environmental challenge that most Americans personally worry the most about in Gallup's March 2007 question.  It lags behind more tangible concerns such as air pollution and toxic waste. It is, however, the number one environmental problem according to ABC News/Washington Post/Stanford's April 2007 survey.
• Americans believe that global warming is real and that it is serious. Sixty percent in a March 2007 Gallup poll said the effects of global warming have already begun, up from 48 percent in 1997.  
• Most Americans say that they have at least some understanding of global warming. In the Yale poll, 35 percent mostly agreed with the statement "If I had to, I could explain global warming to someone I meet in passing," and 32 percent somewhat agreed.
• Less than three in ten Americans approve of how George W. Bush is handling the issue of global warming.

To read the full study, please visit www.aei.org/publicopinion11.

Karlyn Bowman is available for interviews and can be reached at 202.862.5910 or kbowman@aei.org (assistant: 202.862.5917 or afoster@aei.org).

For additional media inquiries, please contact Véronique Rodman at vrodman@aei.org or 202.862.4871.

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