Americans started more than 2,000 petitions about the environment in the last year. What environmental issues worried them the most?
There were more petitions started about conservation (128) and more signatures (976,000) gathered from conservation petitions than any other environmental topic. This includes campaigns to make sure that grizzly bears stay on the endangered species list, to ban lethal hunting traps in wolf habitats, and do away with gillnets in Hawaii in order to curb over-fishing.
The most popular topics to start petitions about include pollution (78), outdoor recreation (78), parks (70), water (64), and climate change (49).
But the topics that garnered the most signatures were pollution (594,000), water (518,000), climate change (503,000), sustainability (338,000), and clean energy (308,000). These topics fall in line with subjects that have been in the news over the past year.
Water is an issue in Flint, Michigan, where it is contaminated, and California, where there has been a drought. Climate change was the topic of a major world summit in Paris. The feasibility of clean energy was questioned over and over in the media as President Obama continued to stress its importance.
Want to know more about how people campaign for the environment? Take a look at our infographic, below: