From the Miami Herald:

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Charlie Crist is cooling to global warming.
Under mounting criticism from fellow Republicans, Crist looks ready to cancel his climate-change summit and is backing away from advocating a “cap-and-trade” energy policy.
At his well-publicized climate summit last summer, Crist pushed a number of energy plans to encourage renewable energy development and establish a cap-and-trade market that would penalize fossil-fuel use.
But Crist’s plans were shredded by the Republican Legislature and his cap-and-trade proposal has been bashed as a “tax” by his Republican U.S. Senate opponent, Marco Rubio, who has been ardently courting the GOP’s conservative wing.
“Well, it may be [a tax]. That may be accurate,” Crist, who recently signed an anti-tax pledge, said Thursday.
He would not say whether he stills backs his own plan or similar versions in Congress.
Crist was even more tight-lipped about hosting another annual “Serve to Preserve Florida Summit on Global Climate Change,” which for two years attracted international media coverage and large, enthusiastic crowds to a downtown Miami hotel. Crist and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger basked in the glow and vowed sweeping reforms to combat global warming.
Asked Thursday about the summit’s fate, Crist said he had not decided yet and cited the “cost” to potential sponsors.
Florida Power & Light, a major sponsor of last year’s summit, gave at least $26,600 to Crist’s record-setting, $4.3 million campaign account in the past three months.
An FPL spokesman would not comment on whether the company would contribute to another summit.
Another previous sponsor, the Everglades Foundation, was prepared to donate $10,000 to another summit, said spokesman Kirk Fordham. The foundation’s chief, investor Paul Tudor Jones, is a Crist fishing pal and contributed $9,600 to his campaign.
Other top sponsors — Environmental Defense Fund and the Energy5.0 solar company — could not be reached for comment.
Rubio said the governor is retreating from his positions on climate change to placate members of his own party, though Crist denies it. Crist broke with the GOP political establishment earlier this year by campaigning alongside President Barack Obama for his economic stimulus plan.
“It’s hard to be a reliable check and balance to the Barack Obama administration when he has embraced its policies, whether it’s energy or his support of the president’s stimulus plan,” Rubio said.
“Luckily, the Legislature stopped his energy tax,” Rubio, a former Florida House Speaker from West Miami, said. “Republicans care about this.”