"The involvement of President Obama’s chief of staff in last week’s decision to withdraw a smog rule might signal a more muscular White House role in vetting costly regulations ahead of the 2012 election."

A group of nine Nobel Prize winners called on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.

"The Obama administration's scrapping of a proposed new rule that would toughen ozone standards has put lawyers involved in litigation over the existing regulations on alert."

"TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott found himself on both sides of the fence on Tuesday when he said in a speech that he supports oil drilling in the Everglades, then hours later issued a clarification that he didn’t mean 'an expansion of drilling.'"

"AUSTIN, Texas -- "Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, has reissued his disaster proclamation nine times this wildfire season; it was originally issued on December 21, 2010. Perry, a Tea Party favorite who is campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, cut short a campaign visit to South Carolina to return to Austin to deal with the fires. Well known for criticizing federal government spending, Perry has since April been seeking federal assistance to pay for wildfire relief and preparedness."

"Protesters hope to persuade President Obama not to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline that would run from Canada to Texas. But the State Department already says its safe, and supporters point to thousands of new jobs."

"The editor of the journal Remote Sensing resigned [Friday], saying in an editorial that his journal never should have published a controversial paper in July that challenged the reliability of climate models used to forecast global warming. The paper, by Roy Spencer and William Braswell of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, proposed that climate researchers have likely made a fundamental error by overestimating the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse-gas pollution."

"President Barack Obama put a stop on Friday to new rules that would limit smog pollution, unexpectedly reversing course on a key policy measure after businesses said it would kill jobs and cost them billions of dollars."