This is for people who are just in too good a mood and need to be brought down a little.

Or a lot.

We speak of a new report from the Heinz center, available here. John Heinz, for those who don't remember, was a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, who died rich and young, heir to a ketchup fortune and a thoroughly admirable fellow.

I got a call the other day from a fellow in Alabama who is a keen student of The Washington Times and its influence on right-wing politics in the U.S., the paper being owned and operated by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, otherwise known as the Moonies.

My caller was incensed by something I had written that dismissed the Times as a silly embarassment that was costing the Reverend Moon and his minions millions of dollars and having no influence to speak of on anything.

My memory is far from perfect, but this rang no bells at all. Where did you come across this? I asked.

One recurring theme among environmentalists, regularly confirmed by pollsters, is that concern over environmental issues seldom guides the way people vote, especially for president. People care, no doubt about that, but generally something else—crime, war, the economy, party loyalty—tips the balance one way or another.

This time will be interesting to watch. There's little question whether global warming will be under discussion—it will be, with the two candidates arguing whose approach will work better, faster. I'm hoping it won't stop there—we need a robust debate about a wide range of environmental issues, from the loss of species to the collapse of the oceans to energy policy. Such matters generally get lost in the clangor of sound bites and spin mongering, but maybe this time will be different.

The fix the planet finds itself in, a predicament that worsens daily, is largely the result of human mismanagement and hubris: too much consumption of all the resources you can think of—fossil fuels, metals, topsoil, fish—by too many people.

I could show you reports and articles from 35 years ago that predicted all this (not yet on-line, for better or for worse), but few listened. It's about time someone did, and an election, for all its excesses and hype, is a time when the media pay some attention to actual issues. Let's hope this time the candidates will talk about what really matters.

I'm into the last stages of a book on the roadless rule—you remember, the rule that protects unroaded areas on the national forests, the one put in place toward the end of the Clinton administration and walked away from by the Bushniks. It's a long, tangled, and fascinating tale and I have two more weeks to get it all down on paper. Well, not on paper these days, but you know what I mean. That's a long way of saying that my columns for this week and next will be pretty thin, but there's much other good stuff to read in Unearthed; I encourage you to sample other columns.

I will, however, put in another of my periodic plugs for one of my favorite sites, Grist (www.grist.org). It's a fine source of information and commentary and it is relentlessly punny. Take a look.

We have just learned that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius will appear June 26 in downtown Denver at an Earthjustice program to tell the story of how her bruising fight with coal power interests has helped create a national clean energy agenda. Seating is limited for the breakfast presentation, and reservations are recommended.

The governor rose to national prominence in the last year largely because of her unwavering stance on clean energy alternatives. As a result, Kansas—which gets 75 percent of its electricity from coal—is actually leading the nation away from dependence on coal and towards a mixed palette of sustainable, clean energy sources.

First we had the skeptics, the nay-sayers, who denied that the climate is heating up, or, if it is, it's natural and not our fault. Rush Limbaugh still spouts this line, as does Senator Jim Inhofe, but their ranks are dwindling, have in fact dwindled to insignificance.

So now the next wave, as in this piece on a New York Times blog, borrowed from a piece on the Wired magazine blog, which argues that much environmental orthodoxy must be turned on its head.

To wit:
LIVE IN CITIES: Urban Living Is Kinder to the Planet Than the Suburban Lifestyle
No problem here; we've known this for a long time.

A/C IS OK: Air-Conditioning Actually Emits Less C02 Than Heating
Just because something contributes less carbon than something else doesn't make it OK. The surge in demand for electricity on hot days puts enormous strain on the grid. Insulate!

I've never been quite sure what 'a perfect storm' means (didn't see the movie), but it seems to mean a situation where everything gangs up on you. If so, we seem to be already in perfect storm territory in the building competition between hungry people and thirsty vehicles for corn and other grains.

Just the other day Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B, which is just out in its third incarnation and gets more valuable with each iteration, was saying that the amount of corn necessary to make enough fuel to fill the tank of a good-sized SUV once could feed a person for a year. Putting aside the side that you'd get awfully tired of Fritos and polenta, I find this is a shocking statistic. And it's not only SUVs, of course, most of our vehicles are now in direct competition with people for nourishment and the price of food is going through the roof, especially in countries where people can't afford enough food anyway.

As everyone knows by now, the administration has moved to give Endangered Species Act protection to the polar bear—sort of. The bear goes on the list, but there a big footnote that says that energy development can proceed unhindered. Interior Secretary Kempthorne proclaimed that the Endangered Species Act must not be used to combat global warming.

Various forces, including the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, pledged to contest the listing in court. To have any hope of success, they'll need some tame scientists on their side. Read on.

We are strictly nonpartisan and apolitical here at Tom's Turn, so we will be naming no names today.

Let's put it this way. Two powerful and influential figures with overweening political ambition have suggested that the federal government should suspend federal gasoline taxes between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year to provide some relief to people suffering from soaring prices.

A brilliant idea it is, for sure. The figure I heard as I rode to work this morning (on my bike, ain't I noble) was that this magnificent gesture will save the average American driver just under $30, which isn't even a whole tank of gas. And here I thought the whole idea these days was to discourage the burning of gasoline and other fossil fuels, which are warming us up and driving us broke.

I'm personally of the opinion (this is just me; don't holler at Earthjustice please) that gas should be at least $10 a gallon, with most of the money diverted to support mass transit and other good public purposes. I'm also inclined to suggest looking into a way to stop Big Oil from bleeding the public with obscene profits going to their executives and shareholders.

We don't get very many comments here at Tom's Turn—please comment!—so when we do, we pay attention. To this one, for example, from Brenda Hixenbaugh:

"Considering the track records of certain officials, isn't it time that we get people elected who are directly connected to all of this planet's and our needs? Surely there are a great number of environmentalists who are qualified for all of these jobs, up to and not excluding the presidency?"

A very good question. The answer, of course, is yes and no. Politics, as they say, is the art of the possible, the art of compromise. As my mentor, Dave Brower, always said, environmentalists ought to be nearly absolute in their policies and positions and leave the compromising to the politicians.