I labeled a post of a couple of days ago, "John McCain is dead to me," about his asinine proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer.

Dumb idea — we need the money it brings in for infrastructure repairs and suspending the tax would lead to more driving, which means more CO2 in the atmosphere. And, it's pandering, because the 18 cents a gallon is hardly going to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people.

The larger disappointment for me was that McCain's stunting was proof that he would bring no commitment to environmental change if elected.

A bit more than a year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had to regulate greenhouse gases. (They need to court to tell them what any 10-year-old could figure out? If not them, who?)

At the beginning of this month, the House select committee on global climate change subpoenaed the EPA for related documents.

I'm slow to the post on this one, but if you hadn't heard, John McCain has proposed a summer holiday from federal gas taxes, to ease the effect of high-market prices during the summer touring season. Unthinkers will love it — they save a few bucks at the pumps, and gee, ain't John a swell guy for looking out for us? Except he is not. Taxes — which I don't like, and no one likes, and gosh wouldn't it be swell if everything were free — are going to be one of the ways we change over from a carbon-based economy to a renewable one.

You can't cruise the sites that discuss global warming for too long without running into a shitstorm between those who believe in the dangers of climate change — and that humankind is causing it — and those who don't. As anyone knows, these fights are always drawn along liberal-conservative lines. But why? Is it belief in the rectitude of corporations, that if a company wants something, it must be good? But then why wouldn't the people who support subsidies for Big Oil not also support them for Little Solar, or whatever?

Several green sites this morning have video of Al Gore speaking at the Ted sessions in February in Monterey, Calif. Sadly, though I'm sure it's possible, I've not figured out to have video on this blog, so you're stuck (oops, wait, come back!) with a couple of notes I took away from it... "Change the light bulbs, but also, change the laws," Gore said.

Apparently, Mayor Menino is announcing a $550,000 initiative today to make Boston a solar city, whatever that means. The info, from boston.com, is pretty sketchy, such as where the money comes from and just what it does.

This morning's newspapers bring interesting troika of news tidbits, and I don't know where to start. At the very top of the Times is a report on its right track/wrong track poll, which reached a nadir, or zenith, of 81 percent thinking we're on the wrong track, a more extreme opinion than at any time since the poll was undertaken in the early '90s. (Thank you, Mr. President.) With a result like that, and with the landscape in general littered with broken dreams and promises, one could easily conclude we're headed for disaster. 

Numbers have no meaning until we attach it: 365 days, the 747, 1-20-09. So far, I wouldn't say 350 has been tagged, but the environmental writer — and, increasingly, activist — Bill McKibben and some compatriots intend to change that.

It's a snippet from the Tom Waits song, "Ol' 55," and for the second time inside a year, it comes to mind to as a means to express. Yesterday, I finally did something. For way too long, I thought about acting in defense of the planet, and perhaps would engage people in conversation about it — and even then, "hectoring" them would too often have been a better description — but my actions lagged far behind.

I cannot imagine a single person outside the coal industry who is enthusiastic about coal. Never mind enthusiastic — I cannot imagine any thinking person with a direct financial interest having any toleration for doing anything whatsoever with coal other than leaving it in the ground, undisturbed, forever.

I know that the president refers to our country as the Saudi Arabia of coal, but a) he's completely co-opted on any traditional-energy topic, and b) he's ... well, I'll just leave it at a).