Last week the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) issued a report detailing how the world’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, has donated $16 million since 1998 to 43 ideological groups working to discredit the science of human-induced climate change. The group joins a growing chorus of voices asking the oil giant and world’s most profitable company to turn the corner on global warming and start embracing a transition from fossil fuels.

Esteemed environmental policy analyst Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute told reporters last week that Americans and the rest of the world are likely to see sharp increases in the price of corn, let alone the popular biofuel ethanol, due to errors in projections made by federal agriculture planners.

A coalition of environmental groups and individual states cheered last week when a federal appeals court overturned a decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to weaken limits on smog pollution generated by large power plants and factories in urban areas across the country.

In what many environmentalists consider an about-face on both endangered species and global warming, the Bush administration last week announced that it would recommend listing America’s polar bears as threatened under the nation’s Endangered Species Act.

The fact that nuclear waste is the most toxic substance on the planet may be lost on those who vehemently call for the country to pour its resources into creating more plants. And the U.S. currently has no viable near-term storage options for nuclear waste which continues to pollute for generations.