Graphic by Shea Huffman/Marketplace

Earth day, at 44, may be a little tired. The United Nations continues to report that the urgency of fighting climate change, for instance, should be red hot. But polling from Gallup shows that fewer people say they worry about it “a great deal” than at any time since 1998, when Gallup started asking the question. 

Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, says there’s a trend that the top-line numbers don’t show: The people who have moved from saying they’re concerned about the environment to saying “not-so-much” are Republicans.

“So clearly the fact that this has become a political football has kept the overall concern numbers down,” he says. “You’ve got a lot of conservatives and Republicans who say that it’s exaggerated, and the concern and alarm are not nearly as high as Democrats say they are.”

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, doesn’t think that polarization will last. He cites numbers from a poll commissioned by the Sierra Club, showing that young voters want action on climate change.

“To me, that says you’re going to see a return to bipartisan solutions on this issue sometime soon,” Krupp says. “Because for either political party to have a future, they’re going to have to address this overwhelming challenge.”