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As you'd expect, The Tribune gets a lot of letters and phone calls, and I sometimes get those messages sent along to me via e-mail. In the vast majority of these occasions, I come away from them enlightened.

Interesting ideas can come from the most unlikely of places.

One recent message came from Elmer Neumann, a 92-year-old long-retired Atomic Energy Commission employee concerned about global warming and the future of the planet.

His idea? Supply every Albuquerque Public Schools middle schooler with a copy of the kids' version of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." Designed for the 8- to 12-year-old, it's a stripped-down version (92 pages) of the original book.

Gore, as we know, recently shared a Nobel Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As half loaves go, not too shabby for Gore.

On the local level, Neumann is looking for the whole loaf, so passionate is he about the idea of global warming. His goal is to promote education about the causes of and solutions to global warming from the ground up, to start with school-age kids and let them effect change at the dinner table.

Neumann started making phone calls and writing letters. A couple of those calls were to the bookstores Hastings and Barnes and Noble, which liked the idea, he says, and donated copies of the book.

So, with the help of Neumann's daughter, copies of the book and a letter were hand-delivered to Gov. Bill Richardson, Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia, Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Beth Everitt and Mayor Martin Chavez.

Imagine the size of Neumann's smile when he received a personal phone call from Chavez himself, who very much liked the idea, he says. Props to the mayor for taking the time for that call. I can tell you that Neumann was rather pleased.

If this is all starting to sound familiar, it should, because sometime after that phone call, the mayor had another plan altogether.

Given the fallout over a recent round of "training sessions" for city employees, who were required to watch an edited version of the Gore film, the mayor discovered a rather inconvenient truth himself: "You can lead a horse to water," as they say.

"Whatever they were doing got off to a rocky start," Neumann said earlier this week. "Teaching employees is a great idea, but the difficult thing is what to teach and whether different groups get taught the same thing or not," he said.

That would be the least of it.

Political culture being what it is, especially during an election cycle, the employee idea was either a stroke of brilliance or a nefarious attempt at mind control.

Neumann remains undeterred. He wants kids to take control of their own fate.

"Reading the book will be a sure way to develop a well-informed public, (which) we need to have in order to deal with these problems," Neumann said. "Students will be able to influence their friends and peers and parents as a result from what they've learned."

So, where do we stand on APS and this idea?

Neumann says a conversation regarding the distribution of the book inside APS has happened between the mayor and Beth Everitt. No one at APS could confirm the conversation to me or say where the idea stands. But a spokesman for APS said the district's science adviser, Patricia Wagner, sees no problem with using the book as a learning tool on the subject if a teacher is so moved.

There's also a process for getting a book into the system, through various committees and such.

Now, I suppose one could fast track the idea in some manner, but after what went wiggy at City Hall, it would be reasonable to expect a drama of its own accord with that approach.

Beth Everitt has enough on her plate right now, but Neumann's logic behind the idea deserves a fair hearing.

At the end of the day, even if the idea does not pass muster at APS, let's not lose sight of the real story: There's still room in this overheated world for one man or woman with one idea to make an impact.

I wouldn't bet against Elmer Neumann.