It was nearly three years ago when Adam Lee defied the auto industry and went to Augusta to urge lawmakers to require less polluting cars and trucks be sold in Maine.

The president of Lee Auto Malls has since become a vocal advocate for Maine’s clean car law, which became a centerpiece of the state’s efforts to slow global warming. The new standards, which would have made cars 30 percent cleaner and more fuel efficient by 2016, were scheduled to be phased in starting with the 2009 models.

Were. The Bush administration slammed the brakes on that plan this week by announcing it will not grant a legal waiver allowing California, Maine and at least 15 other states to clean the air and cool the planet by regulating the car industry.

College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, already regarded as the “greenest” college in the world, has now become the first to claim that it is carbon neutral.

Being carbon neutral would mean COA has effectively eliminated all of its carbon dioxide emissions, a primary driver of global warming.

First, it reduced its energy use in a variety of ways, from replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones to promoting carpools and bicycle use.

Then, the college invested money in a project that it says will eliminate enough additional energy waste to offset any remaining emissions here. The project in this case involves coordinating traffic lights in Portland, Ore., so that cars and trucks don’t idle as much and burn less fuel. The college’s investment is expected to translate into a reduction of nearly 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the next five years.

The announcement is sure to get COA even more praise for raising the bar for other schools. Not everyone will be impressed, no doubt.

There are plenty of critics who say true carbon neutrality is impossible and that buying offsets is a cop-out for those who can afford the luxury. Of course, those people probably aren’t applying for enrollment at COA anyway.

There seems to be a big thaw taking place in northern Maine.

Oh, the air is still plenty nippy north of Bangor. It’s the chilly relationship between the warring parties of the North Woods that’s warming up.

In fact, an announcement issued last weekend about a creative land deal near Millinocket sounds like an honest-to-goodness breakthrough in the biblical struggle between recreation, commerce and wilderness preservation in the region.

First, Millinocket Town Manager Eugene Conlogue gives credit to Roxanne Quimby, northern Maine’s most notorious preservationist. And Quimby says kind things about Conlogue and the negotiators who represented snowmobilers and hunters, many of whom drive around with “Ban Roxanne” bumper stickers on their cars and pickups.

“They were very nice people,” Quimby said this week. “We saw, especially after the first couple meetings, that we had a lot in common.”

What they essentially agreed on is that the North Woods are big enough for conservation, recreation and wood production, and that they have to stop fighting over those priorities before the land gets sold and divided so that none of them can happen.