Political figures often seem uncomfortable with a lot of personal scrutiny.

Rep. Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, is opening herself up, to the extreme.

Pingree, the 30-year-old House Majority Leader and fast-rising star of the Maine Legislature, has given up samples of her blood, hair and urine to be tested for toxic chemicals. It’s part of a study to be released within a few weeks by a coalition of environmental and public health organizations.

Pingree, who has made no secret of findings that she is carrying around an assortment of toxins that have no business in the human body, sponsored a bill this session to phase out a common fire retardant chemical. (The phase out of deca-BDE got the initial support of the Natural Resources Committee last week, although committee members brought it back for a follow-up discussion today.)

We’ll bring you the full study details as soon as they’re available. In the meantime, the Lewiston Sun Journal had a story about Pingree’s role as a very public guinea pig and her decision to forgo sushi and tuna as a result.

All of which makes you wonder: If a 30-year-old woman who grew up on a fairly remote Maine island has this stuff in her body, what are the rest of us packing around?

Yahoo did it. So did the presidential campaigns of John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.

Even Norway and Sweden did it. (Europe, not Oxford County.)

Now the University of Maine System, or nearly all of it, has taken the pledge to try to eliminate its contribution to global warming.

The goal is called becoming climate neutral or carbon neutral, because scientists say carbon dioxide emissions are the primary way college campuses, businesses, countries and the rest of us are doing our part to heat up the atmosphere.

Colleges around the country are joining the trend as part of the whole “green campus” movement. They say their efforts reflect the schools’ role in society and their responsibility to the young people they serve.

It’s also a point of competition for the schools to present the greenest reputation to prospective students and alumni.

Dudley Greeley, the sustainability office director at the University of Southern Maine, said Maine’s was one of the first state university systems to sign the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. Actually, the presidents of the system’s largest six campuses have signed. The Augusta campus hasn’t made the list yet. One of the signers is USM President Richard Pattenaude, the man who soon will be chancellor of the whole system and who is a strong supporter of the sustainability movement.

Maine’s first school to join the neutrality quest was the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. President David Hales made the pledge publicly last fall.

Also signed onto the Climate Commitment in Maine are Bates and Unity colleges. Bowdoin and Colby, though not officially signed on, have active sustainability programs.

The formal pledge doesn’t come with a deadline for achieving climate neutrality. It does set interim deadlines to meet along the way: Complete an emissions inventory within one year and, within two, create a detailed plan and set a target date for reaching the goal.

Schools have begun by building more energy-efficient buildings, encouraging public transportation, buying power from renewable energy and making other changes.

Energy efficiency and public transportation seem innocent enough, right? There is some controversy around the whole climate-neutral trend, however.

That’s because it’s impossible at this point for a school or a business to produce no carbon dioxide. Employees and students drive cars and fly in airplanes, to name a couple reasons.

A theoretical zero impact requires buying offsets, which are payments to remove an equivalent amount of carbon from the atmosphere somewhere else in the world by planting trees, building windmills or something like that.

Offsets have gotten a lot of scrutiny and criticism because they’re unregulated and somewhat risky. Many also see them as an indulgence or a way to avoid real emissions reductions.

According to Greeley, the campus pledge initiative limits the use of offsets to a fraction of the other reductions that schools have to make. Neutrality, for now, is simply a goal.

So prospective college students now have another question to ask: Is the campus going climate-neutral? If the reply is to go ahead and open a window, that would be a “no.”

Plum Creek Timber Co.'s latest plan for rezoning and developing timberlands around Moosehead Lake will be submitted tomorrow morning, according to a public relations consultant working for the company.

Notice we didn’t say ‘final plan.’ The new revised proposal would be the third version submitted to Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission in two years. And, given the historic and financial magnitude of the project, a lot more reviewing and tinkering is sure to lie ahead.

The commission could hold public hearings as soon as late summer or fall, depending on how much the plan has changed.

Seattle-based Plum Creek submitted its first 420,000-acre plan in April 2005. The first two versions proposed rezoning pieces of commercial forests to make way for two resorts and 975 house lots clustered around ponds, lakes or rivers.

Keep an eye on the newspaper’s Web site for news updates. You can also keep tabs on Plum Creek’s Web page for the Maine plan, and by going to the commission page devoted to Plum Creek.

And don't forget to tell us what you think.

There are certainly a lot of people around here who might be planning to snub Earth Day this year.

Mother Nature has been acting a lot more like an overcaffeineted Joan Crawford than Carol Brady, to name a couple other famous moms. Her temper was indeed cruel to many Maine families this week.

Not to make excuses, but we did put those roads, power lines and houses where trees have been falling and rivers have been flooding for a long time. And, after all, it is the only planet we’ve got, at least for the time being.

Spaceship Earth was the term used around the time of the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. The point was that since we’re basically along for the ride, bumpy or not, we ought to keep the old orb clean and tuned up.

That first Earth Day was a big deal, with more than 20 million people participating in demonstrations around the country. Soon after, President Richard Nixon created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Congress, with help from Maine’s Sen. Edmund Muskie, passed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

We can’t let this Earth Day pass without also dropping the name Rachel Carson, a part-time Mainer who published Silent Spring in 1962 and has been called the mother of the environmental movement. Next month is the 100th anniversary of her birth, and local events are planned to remember her.

Many believe Earth Day 2007 marks another important moment in the relationship between people and their planet.

Growing concern about humans upsetting earth’s climate, primarily by burning coal, oil and gas, is focusing attention once again on the well-being of Spaceship Earth. We may be headed into a new environmental ethic, though it’ll take a decade or two to see if this Earth Day is anywhere near as historic as the first.

There are plenty of activities planned around the state, both today and tomorrow. And Mother Nature is supposed to be in a much better mood. We’re talking Donna Reed-nice, even.

Of course, there’s a lot to be said for staying put and not even starting the car on Earth Day. Here are a few things, compiled from many different sources, that you can do that really are carbon neutral and, as a bonus, may also save you money.

Make a household climate action plan – a list of ways you can reduce energy use in the next month or year. (You know – buy more efficient light bulbs and appliances, eliminate trips in the car, hang your clothes out to dry...)

Organize the old chemicals and hazardous stuff hanging around the garage, basement and kitchen so you’ll be ready to take advantage of hazardous waste collections this spring.

Check the air pressure in your car’s tires and, if they’re low, remember to fill them next time you’re out.

Draw up a yardscape plan that includes less lawn to mow, and more trees and native plants.

Create a system, or plan one, for composting food waste and yard waste.

Feed the birds. They’ve got to be hungry.

Ride a bike or walk someplace where you might normally drive. And, if you’re lucky enough to see a flower, for God’s sake stop and smell it.

Below is a partial list of events.

It may have seemed like better weather for fish this week. As much as 8 inches or rain. Roads and neighborhoods underwater.

But, in reality, the fish may be getting the worst of it. Same with the lobsters and the clams and everything else living just the other side of the high-tide line.

A look at Portland Harbor shows why. That brown, murky water is full of all the stuff that got flushed off Portland and surrounding towns – oil, gasoline, cigarette butts, trash, animal waste, cigarette butts.... Did I mention cigarette butts?

Overwhelmed sewage systems added a lot of human waste and industrial effluent. And, to add insult to injury, all that freshwater itself can actually be toxic to some animals that can’t swim away or hide in their shells.

The state has banned clam digging along most of the coast because of bacteria, and few humans are likely to be swimming this week. (It’ll be nice, but not that nice). So public health isn’t an immediate concern. Unless, perhaps, if you’re on a boat.

Casco Bay is a bit of an obstacle course right now, according to those working on the water. There’s lots of debris, from large pieces of wood to a lot of trash, bobbing around in the murky swells.

The bigger, heavier obstacles, naturally, are the ones just beneath the surface and hardest to see. And, because there is no cleaning staff out on the ocean, it’ll take some time for all that debris to either drift out or find its way onto a beach somewhere.

See now, don’t you feel better?

John Dean has made a career of putting out fires, and preventing them. But this one just keeps getting hotter.

Dean, Maine’s state fire marshal, has been caught up in a pitched battle over a flame retardant chemical used in consumer products such as TVs and electronics.

Environmental and public health advocates want Maine to phase out the chemical – called deca-BDE – because it’s also showing up in things like seal blubber, falcon eggs and human breast milk. The manufacturers who make it, meanwhile, don’t want any more states to ban it. (Washington’s Legislature became the first earlier this month.)

Dean has tried to contain the rhetoric with a little cool logic, but a firestorm flared up this week with controversial TV, radio and newspapers ads paid for by the manufacturers.

Maine’s celebrity bald eagles have done it again.

Last year, the birds surprised everyone when a rare third chick appeared in the nest, which is broadcast over the Internet by a Web cam in a nearby tree.

And this morning, just a couple of days after the nest was declared barren, scientists have confirmed that a chick has hatched. Its tiny fuzzy head showed up on the Web cam this morning. And the legions of fans watching the nest day and night are soaring with excitement about what some of them are calling a miracle baby.

The Web cam is the work of The BioDiversity Research Institute in Gorham, and it has turned into far more than fan favorite. Scientists who have studied eagles for decades are now watching it as closely as the distracted office workers and sleepless eagle addicts.

The eagle pair has successfully raised eaglets in the nest for 13 straight years and is considered Maine’s most prolific bald eagle parents. But the deep freezes and heavy snows this spring, puzzling behaviors that suggested their eggs failed and even a biologist’s flyover that revealed no signs of eggs in the nest, all led scientists to declare this week that the eagles had broken their fertility streak.

Observers were left hoping that the eagles would try again, and were encouraged when they saw them mating on the nest last weekend. Well, apparently, the eagles just really like each other. And, it seems, they had covered the egg or eggs to shelter them from wind when the biologist flew over. (Could they be getting tired of people watching and analyzing every move they make? Nah. You think?)

Whether there was more than one egg, or already more than one chick, is unknown. You’ll have to watch. The scientists sure are.

For the updated photos and a blog with the comments of scientists and observers, look here.

So you’ve changed your light bulbs and your driving habits, now what?

This Saturday, Mainers across the state will join a virtual nationwide rally happening in more than 1,000 home towns from coast to coast. Large rallies are planned in Portland, Augusta and Bangor. There’ll be events in Bridgton, Belfast, Kennebunk, Caribou and about 20 other towns, too.

The Internet-driven campaign is called “Step it Up 2007” and has been led by author Bill McKibben. McKibben wrote about global warming in his book “The End of Nature” in 1989, and is now a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.

McKibben and others say it’ll take more than compact fluorescent bulbs to slow global warming, and what’s needed is a grassroots movement to demand an 80 percent reduction in heat-trapping carbon emissions by 2050.

The Portland rally will include what is called a “New Coast Parade,” starting at 11 a.m. in Post Office Park at the corner of Exchange and Middle streets and ending with a rally in Monument Square with music, speeches, information tables, belly dancers and guerilla tango dancers. (No, I did not make that last part up.)

It’s called “New Coast” because it’ll follow what could be Portland’s new waterfront if all the ice in Greenland melts over the next several hundred years and sea levels rise 20 feet.

Other events include a rally at the polar bear statue and music on the quad at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, a free tire air pressure check in York and a gathering of concerned neighbors in Brownville.

Go to the Step it Up site for more information and click on Maine to get information about the events here.

The science and politics of a shifting global climate just keep heating up.

On Monday, the Supreme Court weighed in with a big global warming ruling, and on Friday experts from 130 countries gave a sobering report in Brussels about how the changes will, and already are, affecting the planet. Here in Maine, meanwhile, state government is making some climate news of its own.

You didn’t think a snowstorm in April would make all this global warming talk go away, did you?