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. 

In the Globe, meanwhile, are a couple of stories that add incremental hope to the overriding story line of our generation, especially when they happen to arrive on the same day. The first is that the Cambridge and Somerville have joined Boston in pledging to stop buying bottled water; they were joined by a small number of restaurants in the area. (Let me pause to give a shout-out to Veggie Planet of Harvard Square, easily one of my favorite places to eat, which never did sell bottled water. That leaves it out of this little halo of attention, even though it deserved it before any of these. But anyway...)

Three out of four people use bottled water, and one in five use it only. The bottles swell landfills, and for little reason — whatever gains people think they're getting from the "purity" of bottled water are illusory, or largely so. Add dollar and environmental costs, and that's even more true. And as with all pollution/solid waste issues, we all pay part of the tab, giving each of us a stake in the issue.

The actions announced yesterday were the result of advocacy by Corporate Accountability International, the Boston nonprofit leading the national "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign.

The other story I found hopeful said that this February over last, T ridership increased from 27 million to almost 30 million, which the story interpreted as the result of very high gasoline prices. This is a great example of people voting with their wallets for more public transportation, and it's not hard to envision when the public might insist on increased public transit spending, instead of more roads spending, because they're not getting their needs met.

Yes, events rarely proceed in a straight line, and yes, it would have to continue to worsen before that eventuality develops, and yes, there are a bunch of other caveats. I'd like to take this as evidence that greatly increased taxes on bad-for-the-planet activities like one-occupant car commutes would have the same result, but I am aware that this is a reaction to "the market," which is harder to argue with than a bunch of lowly regarded politicians.

Raising gas prices by raising taxes will be seen by a large swath of Americans as an imperious money grab by greedy politicians, rather than social intervention for the common good, no matter what they say they're going to do with the money. Regardless, here are individuals, businesses, and communities taking actions that indisputably are healthy for the planet, and for we partisans of the green movement, that's indisputably good news.

The Times poll results, however, raise a larger question colored by all the recent comparisons between Herb Hoover and the current Oval Office occupant: Will larger forces impede the small, consistent steps that are emerging in defense of our imperiled environment? If the 81 percent are correct, or more specifically, if the strength of opinion presages severe events ahead — will planet-saving recede back to optional nicety?

People wondering how to feed their families will hardly be contemplating which part of the roof to put their new solar array on.