"The White House Conference on America's Great Outdoors will be held April 16. It will focus on how local leadership, not the federal government, can encourage conservation."

"In Maryland, messing with Big Chicken can bring big trouble. The latest case study is playing out in Annapolis, where the state Senate wants to impose greater scrutiny on the University of Maryland's environmental law clinic. The reason? Apparently, it's the law clinic's pro bono work for an environmental group that is suing an Eastern Shore chicken farmer and the poultry giant Perdue Farms."

"Why some right-leaning evangelical Christians have become true believers in climate change. God and green go together, these conservatives say."

"Lord Oxburgh, former non-executive chairman of Shell, will head up a team of leading scientists looking at claims fossil fuels cause global temperatures to rise."

"The leader of the [California's] largest water pollution regulator is married to a lobbyist for agencies it regulates, a potential conflict of interest she did not disclose publicly until an ethics complaint was brought against her."

"Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill White earned more than $2.6 million serving on the board of a gas well servicing company that now is part of a congressional investigation into possible groundwater contamination."

"A group of 14 Midwestern electric utilities continued its push today for a different direction on global warming legislation, asking the Senate's lead climate negotiators to get a full economic study on their bill for businesses and consumers in coal-dependent states."

"The bill that funds the Energy Department and water projects for this year contains at least six earmarks giving grants to for-profit companies. And in at least two cases, lawmakers obtained earmarks for companies that had given those same House members campaign contributions."

"The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) launched an effort Wednesday to tip the scales in the close Missouri Senate race against Rep. Roy Blunt (R) by playing up oil-industry contributions to the conservative lawmaker."

Florida GOP Governor Charlie Crist's $1.75 billion plan to save the Everglades by buying out a major landowner, United States Sugar, is turning out two years later to be a plan to save U.S. Sugar. The Everglades? -- not so much.

Two Texas-based refining companies, Valero and Tesoro, and the PR firm they have hired, have refused comment on a story identifying them as the sole sources of money behind a state bill that would suspend California's law cutting greenhouse gases.

"Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation's classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools."

"Prominent British researchers at the heart of the hacked email scandal shot down accusations of illegally withholding scientific information charting the planet's temperature, telling a parliamentary hearing that certain governments had prohibited them from publishing all the raw data."

"One of three Democratic senators who supports blocking U.S. EPA's ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants draws one of the highest amounts of campaign contributions from electric utilities."

"Former Vice President Al Gore took aim at skeptics who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change, saying he wished it were an illusion but that the problem is real and urgent."