"WASHINGTON -- More than 4 out of 5 Americans want to prepare now for rising seas and stronger storms from climate change, a new national survey says. But most are unwilling to keep spending money to restore and protect stricken beaches."

The hour-long report on the fossil-industry and right-wing climate science denial movement broadcast on PBS Frontline Tuesday night raises a key issue. Did deniers win their fight to stop action on global warming by killing it in Congress and keeping it out of the presidential campaign?

The big international Earth Summit coming next year in Rio de Janiero -- 20 years after the epochal original meeting there -- may generate both good news and bad news about the future of the planet.

"The federal government promoted some uses of coal ash, including wallboard or filler in road embankments, without properly testing the environmental risks, according to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general."

"President Obama’s budget, released Monday, essentially treads water on energy and the environment, trying to maintain momentum for alternative energy research even as it cuts deeply into some environmental protection programs."

"Rare minerals. Food and water. Arable soil. Air-cleansing forests. In the intellectual heart of the American military and policy-making world, these are emerging not just as environmental issues, but as the potential stuff of conflict in the 21st century."

FBI agents during the Bush administration "investigated members of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace over their protest activities 'with little or no basis,' [a Justice Department Inspector General's] report said. Agents kept the case open for more than three years, even though no charges were filed, and put the activists on a terrorist watch list, it said."

A high-level seminar in Washington June 29 probed the apparent disconnect between scientific knowledge and public understanding, especially as it relates to climate change. The debate spilled over into the blogosphere.

"One environmental leader says if we keep doing what we're doing, the world will continue on a path toward economic decline and eventual collapse."

In the Yaak Valley of Montana, environmentalists have been talking to loggers, snowmobilers and other longtime opponents of wilderness protection about the future of public lands. Rick Bass writes of his involvement in a cooperative effort that could lead to the first wilderness-area designation in the state in a quarter-century.