Consider these points in regards to scientists, the environment and everything:

(1) scientists (much less anyone else) instantly start to become biased (even if it is subconsciously) the moment their work becomes funded by money - if they want the money to fund their research, they have to put up with things like:

- developing super weapons for ulterior purposes/ developing boring, practical technological tools when they WANT to design and develop super weapons.. I mean, wonders of the world.
- skewing test results towards what the funders want to see so they can keep the funding coming in.
- if said scientist is smart, they will keep an "ace up the sleeve", ie email correspondence, the key/remote/kill switch to said ultra-mega-killing machine, or your usual black mail or copy of the invention. If the scientist is NOT that smart (or lucky or politically savvy), then we know what usually happens....

hint: he didn't used to look like this when he first got the job...

have we not learned this in movies since the 1950's?

(2) Sluggo and co.: you are correct in that neither side really seem to care about what they are saying. Republicans could have expanded coal and oil production (or at least built more refineries, as one of the biggest reasons gas/ natural gas/ diesel cost so much is because we have very few refineries to process the oil/ ore), whereas Democrats could have begun creation of nuclear fission/ fusion, pushed the lunar mining project (to mine the fuel for said fusion reactors), develop solar roofing shingles and building windows to turn neighborhoods and entire cities into solar power plants, etc. Yet we have been talking about this since Tesla (and that was what, 1920's?)!

(3) in regards to pollution, the simple fact is that the Earth pollutes itself FAR more in one year from any random volcanic explosion than the entirety of the Industrial Revolution (from the late 1800's to this very second)..

NOT TO MENTION:
the worse humans could ever do is return the Earth back to its prime/first state of molten hot magma. People tend to forget that the Earth is 99% solid and liquid rock, and the "environment" is the millimeter thin skin (or fungus growing on the bark, if you will). If environmentalists were a little more honest about their message ("Save the Humans") and spent their time AND MONEY creating the alternative energy sources as opposed to wasting their time bitching about stuff they have no intention of fixing (see Al Gore, Earth Liberation Front, James Cameron, etc.), people would take them more seriously.

Oh yeah: and it's always the smart thing to do to create the replacement energy source BEFORE you start anything like "cap and trade" on what you are currently using.

Or in the words of George Carlin and Penn and Teller...

STOP THE EVIL OF DI HYDROGEN MONOXIDE and the excessive urination it causes!