The isolated Western town of Burns, Ore., waits in worry today over what might happen next between the federal government and angry ranchers taking a stand for land rights. 

For these first two weeks of December, Paris is the scene of a city within a city. As many as 50,000 people from nearly 200 countries have descended on the French capital for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Representatives from government, business and nonprofit organizations are seeking to hammer out a deal that will cap greenhouse gas emissions thatsome scientists say contribute to global warming. But critics say the much-touted summit will only generate more hot air.

WEST VIRGINIA—Bo Webb knows when his family arrived in West Virginia: 1821. He lives where his family has long lived, in Peachtree Hollow in coal country. The mountains press close to the roads, which are lined with old storefront Pentecostal and Baptist churches. The towns around here, like Eunice, are named after coal mining executives’ wives, mothers, and sisters. Children play football in a field next to a coal processing facility.

The Vatican on Thursday released a highly anticipated document widely viewed as signaling the Roman Catholic Church’s position on climate change and environmental issues.

In the document—a form of papal teaching known as an “encyclical”—Pope Francis appealed to biblical ideas of stewardship to denounce pollution, lament loss of biodiversity, and call for action to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Two of the honored guests inside the walled gardens of the Vatican in Rome this April weren’t the typical people you’d expect to see feted at the global seat of Roman Catholicism.

Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, has promoted abortion around the world. Jeffrey Sachs, a UN advisor, is a major advocate of population control.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches abortion is a sin and that artificial contraception disrupts God’s design for marital sexuality.

The Vatican will meet next week to form Pope Francis’ campaign to persuade world leaders to take action against climate change.

Francis’ expected encyclical, a letter sent from the pope to all the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church, will be the Vatican’s first official, detailed word about climate change and what Church members should do about it.

Last month, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences issued a statement about their stance on climate change. 

The Christian Coalition of America, once a $26 million political bastion of the Christian right, has fallen upon hard times. Its budget has shrunk to about $1 million, including income from a companion 501(c)(3). It might not have survived at all but for environmentalist cash: From 2007 to 2014 it collected at least $3.4 million from groups identified with environmentalism or leftist politics: the Green Tech Action Fund, the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund, and the Energy, Hewlett, Marisla, and Rockefeller foundations.