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Of the groups watching the budget negotiations in Washington this week, environmentalists are among those most keenly interested.

A reported compromise between House and Senate negotiators to cut $32 billion from the remainder of fiscal year 2011 spending could hit environmental programs hard. As much as $3.6 billion in cuts to the Department of Energy and $4.4 billion in cuts to the Department of Interior could affect environmental enforcement, according to the Wilderness Society.

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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has announced that as soon as the Senate returns from the Memorial Day break she will force a vote on a resolution to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from capping global warming pollution. That’s odd.

As the public is waiting to see how the government will respond to the most massive oil spill in our history, an oozing killer that is turning Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican, into the black pelican, it appears that Murkowski is asking for more of the same.

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Colorado mountain economic leaders met Tuesday in Aspen with a representative of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pushing the chamber to change its stance on legislation to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

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The author of God in the Wilderness, known as The Adventure Rabbi, will lead a Passover Seder dinner in the Utah desert next week so participants can experience firsthand the stark, gritty beauty of a desert setting like the one where much of the Exodus story takes place.

Likewise for Easter: You can be so exhilarated and humbled on a ski run or snowshoe trail that there are no obstacles to total joy in Jesus' Easter resurrection, say religion scholar Marcia McFee and Protestant minister Karen Foster, co-authors of Spiritual Adventures in the Snow.

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A federal judge in Missoula has approved a first-of-its-kind settlement requiring the government to suspend 38,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Montana so it can gauge how oilfield activities contribute to climate change.