As Earth Day approached a year ago, Americans seemed smitten with the environment.

Energy-efficient light bulbs flew off the shelves. Hybrid vehicles were the new highway status symbol. Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” ignited new interest in climate change.

Then in January, a series of polls appeared to suggest that the passion had cooled.

Facing the worst recession in generations, Americans said the environment ranked low on their list of concerns. For the first time in 25 years, people told Gallup they would sacrifice environmental protection for economic growth.

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The green movement started to look like a luxury, and some leaders wondered if it would become a victim of the recession.

The reality, experts say, is messy and hidden mostly in the fine print of the polls.

When Americans mark Earth Day 2009 on Wednesday, their true feelings about the environment will have changed little:

They still want clean air and safe water.

They still want to preserve special places, such as national parks.

And they still believe environmental quality is declining.

But it’s more complicated when money’s tight, when politics and government intrude, when the old lines blur between what’s good for the planet and what’s not.

The polls likely have tapped into a shift in attitudes as Americans assess their priorities, but environmental groups say outdated poll questions may overstate a more subtle change.

People’s views of the environment are inevitably bound up with a variety of other issues, including their views on the government, on health, maybe their concern about the well-being of their children and grandchildren, said Riley Dunlap, an environmental sociologist at Oklahoma State University.

What pollsters asked this year were the same questions they always ask: What issues concern you most? This year, the environment slid precipitously as the economy, health care, jobs, crime and education grew in importance.

A second question rattled the poll takers a little more. For the first time in a quarter-century of asking, Americans told Gallup that economic growth should take priority — even if it comes at the expense of the environment.

The findings reflect a sort of hierarchy of needs, said Tom Rex, an Arizona State University economist.

If you don’t even have food and water, then you can’t think about much of anything else, he said. If you have that, you can think about other things.

The environment always drops as a top-level concern in an economic downturn, Rex said. But that doesn’t mean people stop caring.

Some business experts, including some of the architects of President Barack Obama’s recovery plan, think b/bhelping the environment is the key to rebuilding the economy. They say renewable energy and other initiatives will replace jobs lost in the recession.

Poll questions that frame the issue as the environment vs. the economy may deepen the divide.

They are following a very outdated, simplistic framing of the environment, said Dunlap of Oklahoma State.

The polls simply ask what issue is of most concern, and in a recession the economy and jobs will rank first, Dunlap said.

But behind the apparent poor showing of the environment in a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People the Press were details about the answers.

On the environment, which ranked 16th on a list of 20 issues, 41 percent of those surveyed said it should be a top priority; 42 percent said it is important but lower.

Dunlap thinks a more subtle force could be at work, one related to Obama’s election.

His theory, based on tracking polls back to the 1970s, is that when the president or Congress or both support environmental protection, people are less worried because they expect the problems will be addressed.

Support for the environment ranked highest during the administrations of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Dunlap said.

Conservation groups saw Reagan as an enemy to the environment, and the first Bush White House did little to change course.