The Deteriorating Environment Is a Public Concern, but Americans Misunderstand Their Contribution to the Problem

Most people are “very” or “extremely” concerned about the state of the natural world, a new global public opinion survey shows. 

Roughly 70 percent of 22,000 people polled online earlier this year agreed that human activities were pushing the Earth past “tipping points,” thresholds beyond which nature cannot recover, like loss of the Amazon rainforest or collapse of the Atlantic Ocean’s currents. The same number of respondents said the world needs to reduce carbon emissions within the next decade. 

Just under 40 percent of respondents said technological advances can solve environmental challenges. 

The Global Commons survey, conducted for two collectives of “economic thinkers” and scientists known as Earth4All and the Global Commons Alliance, polled people across 22 countries, including low-, middle- and high-income nations. The survey’s stated aim was to assess public opinion about “societal transformations” and “planetary stewardship.”

The results, released Thursday, highlight that people living under diverse circumstances seem to share worries about the health of ecosystems and the environmental problems future generations will inherit. 

But there were some regional differences. People living in emerging economies, including Kenya and India, perceived themselves to be more exposed to environmental and climate shocks, like drought, flooding and extreme weather. That group expressed higher levels of concern about the environment, though 59 percent of all respondents said they are “very” or “extremely” worried about “the state of nature today,” and another 29 percent are at least somewhat concerned.  

Americans are included in the global majority, but a more complex picture emerged in the details of the survey, conducted by Ipsos.

Roughly one in two Americans said they are not very or not at all exposed to environmental and climate change risks. Those perceptions contrast sharply with empirical evidence showing that climate change is having an impact in nearly every corner of the United States. A warming planet has intensified hurricanes battering coasts, droughts striking middle American farms and wildfires threatening homes and air quality across the country. And climate shocks are driving up prices of some food, like chocolate and olive oil, and consumer goods. 

Americans also largely believe they do not bear responsibility for global environmental problems. Only about 15 percent of U.S. respondents said that high- and middle-income Americans share responsibility for climate change and natural destruction. Instead, they attribute the most blame to businesses and governments of wealthy countries. 

Those survey responses suggest that at least half of Americans may not feel they have any skin in the game when it comes to addressing global environmental problems, according to Geoff Dabelko, a professor at Ohio University and expert in environmental policy and security. 

Translating concern about the environment to actual change requires people to believe they have something at stake, Dabelko said. “It’s troubling that Americans aren’t making that connection.”

While fossil fuel companies have long campaigned to shape public perception in a way that absolves their industry of fault for ecosystem destruction and climate change, individual behavior does play a role. Americans have some of the highest per-capita consumption rates in the world.

The world’s wealthiest 10 percent are responsible for nearly half the world’s carbon emissions, along with ecosystem destruction and related social impacts. For instance, American consumption of gold, tropical hardwoods like mahogany and cedar and other commodities has been linked to destruction of the Amazon rainforest and attacks on Indigenous people defending their territories from extractive activities.  

The United States is one of the world’s wealthiest countries, and home to 38 percent of the world’s millionaires (the largest share). But a person doesn’t need to be a millionaire to fit within the cohort of the world’s wealthiest. Americans without children earning more than $60,000 a year after tax, and families of three with an after-tax household income above $130,000, are in the richest 1 percent of the world’s population. 

United Nations emissions gap reports have said that to reach global climate goals, the world’s wealthiest people must cut their personal emissions by at least a factor of thirty. High-income Americans’ emissions footprint is largely a consequence of lifestyle choices like living in large homes, flying often, opting for personal vehicles over public transportation and conspicuous consumption of fast fashion and other consumer goods.  

Translating Concern Into Change

If a majority of people are worried about the state of the planet, why hasn’t that translated into more effective responses? 

The answer, according to Robert J. Brulle, a visiting research professor of environment and society at Brown University, is that surveys showing high levels of public concern about nature tend not to compare the environment with other issues, like the economy, health care and national security. 

When asked to prioritize a range of issues, Americans’ feelings about the environment typically end up at the bottom. In a 2024 Pew poll on Americans’ top concerns, the economy landed at the top while protecting the environment came in 14th and dealing with climate change came in 18th. In a 2024 Gallup poll of Americans’ most pressing problems, the environment didn’t even make the list. 

Policymakers also tend to respond to voting behavior—not the sampling results of public sentiment. 

“Environmental issues are not a major voting issue, so there is no reason for the politicians to respond to those issues if they are a peripheral concern to the population,” Brulle said. 

Other experts suggested that the disconnect between some environmental poll results and political action could be partially attributed to the sway that polluting industries hold over the U.S. political system. That sway, they say, has largely come from corporations’ ability to make unlimited political donations and run campaigns aimed at deceiving politicians and the public about the environmental impacts of their products.  

Support for an Ecocide Crime  

There is at least one area where the Global Commons survey appears to track with political developments happening in a handful of countries and the European Union. 

About three out of four people polled said they would like to see acts that cause serious environmental harm made a criminal offense.

Activists have long called for a crime of “ecocide” to be enshrined into international law alongside crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. But in recent years, the campaign to make ecocide a crime at the international and national levels has ramped up. In 2021, an independent group of legal experts proposed a definition for an ecocide crime covering “severe” and “widespread or long-term environmental damage.” 

Discussions have since bubbled up among governments about incorporating a version of the proposal into the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. 

Over the past few years, the European Union, as well as governments in Chile, France and Belgium have passed ecocide-like laws. Lawmakers in Brazil, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru and Scotland have proposed such legislation. 

Though criminalizing environmental offenses is not new, proponents of ecocide say the laws act as a catchall, as compared to rules that delineate certain pollution thresholds. They also argue that an international ecocide crime would have moral sway, affecting public opinion about mass harm to nature being morally wrong. That might change the behavior of corporations, governments and insurers, said Jojo Mehta, the co-founder and CEO of Stop Ecocide International. 

“People clearly understand that the most severe forms of environmental destruction harm all of us, and that there is real deterrent potential in creating personal criminal liability for top decision-makers,” she said in a press release. “Damage prevention is always the best policy, which is precisely what ecocide law is about.” 

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