--- title: Americans Don't Care That Much About the Environment, Poll Shows description: Americans care less about environmental issues than they have in the past, a new poll shows. canonical: https://time.com/3758465/americans-dont-care-environment-poll/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-25T19:37:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:19.110Z article:section: Science og:title: Americans Don't Care That Much About the Environment, Poll Shows og:description: Concern over the environment is near a record low og:url: https://time.com/3758465/americans-dont-care-environment-poll/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f490c9690b1b37f/6987853b5f570f5318b15ee1/environment-leaf.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Rain drops on green leaf og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Americans Don't Care That Much About the Environment, Poll Shows twitter:description: Concern over the environment is near a record low twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9f490c9690b1b37f/6987853b5f570f5318b15ee1/environment-leaf.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Americans Don't Care That Much About the Environment, Poll Shows > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=bffd1d21-2c0b-4f12-89b6-809a832b520a&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life [Watch (HLS stream): Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7mURxfr4.m3u8) (4:03)  _Published 2014-03-12. Conservationists and scientists have a saying, "extinction is forever." But soon biologists will clone long-gone animals in the hope to redefine that axiom to "DE-extinction is forever."_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Mar 25, 2015 7:37 PM UTC  Rain drops on green leaf Rain drops on green leaf Getty Images by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Mar 25, 2015 7:37 PM UTC Americans care less about environmental issues now than they have in the past—and they’re no more worried about global warming than they were decades ago, [a new poll shows](http://www.gallup.com/poll/182105/concern-environmental-threats-eases.aspx?utm%5Fsource=Politics&utm%5Fmedium=newsfeed&utm%5Fcampaign=tiles). The Gallup survey released on Wednesday shows Americans were more concerned about the environment in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but interested dropped off in the early 2000s. Since then it’s remained close to historic lows. And when it comes to global warming specifically, Americans are no more worried now than they were in 1989. In the recent survey, which questioned 1,025 U.S. adults in early March, Americans reported feeling the most concerned about drinking polluted water and least worried about global warming. In 1989, 35% of the men and women surveyed said they cared a great deal about climate change, but only 32% said the same thing in 2015\. Even when it came to polluted water, just 55% of Americans reported caring a great deal, down from 65% in 1990. Gallup notes that the state of the economy could play a roll in how concerned Americans are about the environment. Americans tend to give environmental concerns a higher priority when the economy is doing well, Gallup says. ## Transcript [ SOUND ] [ MUSIC ] My name is Stuart Brand and I was trained as an ecologist. Conservation is about to take a turn because the technology was gonna allow us to use the DNA that's in the museum specimens and fossils to bring back extinct species [ MUSIC ] The passenger pigeon was around for 6 million years. And people remembered how amazing it was that these animals darkened the sky for hours at a time. There's these stories about these giant flocks blocking out the sun. And their wings sounding louder than thunder. We developed the techniques to hunt and net these birds and basically killed them all. And then it was really gone. When I was growing up, my mother said when the last one died in 1914 it broke America's heart. It was one of the prideful things that America had to show the world, and it was gone. This book. This is essentially the bible of passenger pigeon. I am currently the lead researcher for the deextinction project to bring the extinct passenger pigeon back to life. When I say, oh, we'll bring back a passenger pigeon, everyone goes, oh, my god, that's like Jurassic Park. And no, no, it's not. Not at all. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before. Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. I don't think a pigeon is going to, you know, pluck lawyers off of toilets. No. [ SOUND ]. Aah! [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So how we're actually going to go about deextinction. Every organism has a unique code in their genes. This one would be good I think. So these are actual DNA codes. From a chunk of a passenger pigeon foot. Now, if you can get DNA, then we can actually make it into a living cell. We're going to sequence its whole genome. We're gonna build from scratch the code that is a passenger pigeon, one gene at a time. Compare it to its closest relative. [ MUSIC ] Then we're gonna introduce DNA into the living cell of a band- tailed pigeon. And when you introduce an extinct animal's egg cell into a new mother, then you've changed the game. [ MUSIC ] Which has been done. The extinct Iranian Ibex was successfully cloned. That was the first deextinction. In this particular case, the animal only lived about ten minutes, but it was a proof of concept, and with further efforts, we hope, followed by everything from the passenger pigeon to the Tasmanian tiger. It's one of the most famous human- caused extinctions in the world. Benjamin, the last Tasmanian tiger, died in 1936. It was our direct activity that caused that extinction. For me, biotech is the future of conservation because our meddling is not unnatural. It is what species do. One of the things that gotten used to is the horrifying realization that extinction is forever. 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