On a cold clear day in Jan­u­ary 1987, Wen­dell Blake was pick­ing up trash in Siev­er Manufacturing’s Los Ange­les plant park­ing lot at 9:30 a.m. when he heard the grat­ing sound of met­al scrap­ing against met­al and looked up to see a tall man he rec­og­nized from com­pa­ny town-hall meet­ings, walk­ing between cars four rows away, lean­ing toward the car on his right with his arm down at his side. The scrap­ing sound stopped when the man came to the rear of the car. He walked on through the lot to a gray Mer­cedes, climbed in, and drove away.

Although Blake hadn’t actu­al­ly seen the man’s hand come in con­tact with the car, he was cer­tain he had keyed it. A clos­er look at the car con­firmed his con­clu­sion. A deep scar ran along its side from head­light to taillight.

It took Blake an hour to muster the courage to report what he’d seen to security.

The fol­low­ing week, Siev­er fired James Lock­hart, its Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, for van­dal­iz­ing an employee’s car. Lock­hart denied scratch­ing the car and sued Siev­er. My law firm rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­ny, and I was assigned to defend the case.

Lockhart’s per­son­nel file glowed in the dark. He received uni­form­ly excel­lent per­for­mance reviews through­out his 36 years with the com­pa­ny, climb­ing the cor­po­rate lad­der steadi­ly to become its sec­ond high­est-rank­ing exec­u­tive with a half-mil­lion-dol­lar annu­al salary.

Joyce Aguilar owned the scratched car, a blue 1984 Chevro­let Caprice. It was unmarked when she parked it in the lot the morn­ing Lock­hart walked by. Five employ­ees had report­ed van­dal­ism of their cars in Siever’s lot since the fall of 1986, all scratched in the same man­ner as Aguilar’s Caprice. All the employ­ees, includ­ing Aguilar, worked in low-lev­el jobs. None of them had ever dealt direct­ly with Lockhart.

Lockhart’s work cal­en­dar con­firmed he left the build­ing the day in ques­tion at 9:30 a.m. to attend an off-site meet­ing and he was present at the plant when the oth­er five cars were keyed.

Blake had worked for Siev­er for six years as a Cus­to­di­an in the Main­te­nance Depart­ment. His per­son­nel file was unre­mark­able: aver­age rat­ings, no com­men­da­tions, no dis­ci­pline. He had nev­er inter­act­ed with Lockhart.

I could find no motive for Lock­hart to van­dal­ize Aguilar’s car or for Blake to lie about him.

Ward Dun­ham, the CEO, made the deci­sion to dis­charge Lock­hart. “Blake was afraid he’d be fired for going against Jim,” he told me. “I admired him for com­ing for­ward, and I believed him. When I met with Jim, his angry denials didn’t ring true. Under­neath his defen­sive­ness, I sensed some sort of prob­lem. I tried to get him to open up, but that only made him angri­er. If he’d admit­ted the van­dal­ism, we might have been able to work some­thing out, but he wouldn’t give an inch. I felt I had no choice but to let him go.”

I ques­tioned Blake in Siever’s con­fer­ence room. A short stocky African Amer­i­can man, push­ing forty, dressed in grease-smudged kha­ki work clothes, he answered my ques­tions in a halt­ing voice for an hour. I couldn’t shake his story.

His answer to my last ques­tion was telling. “Why did you come for­ward, Mr. Blake?” I asked. “Why didn’t you lay low to stay out of trouble?”

He gave me a tired look. “The next car he scratched would be my fault much as him.”

I believed Blake.

I took Lockhart’s depo­si­tion. Six­ty-two years old, six-feet-four with a mane of gray hair, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and yel­low tie, he was a por­trait of integri­ty. He said he’d worked long and hard to build a suc­cess­ful career at Siev­er. “The idea that I’d throw it all away to van­dal­ize someone’s auto­mo­bile is ludicrous.”

I believed Lockhart.

Some­thing had to give. Either Blake was mis­tak­en or Lock­hart was men­tal­ly ill. It wor­ried me that Blake hadn’t actu­al­ly seen Lockhart’s hand press­ing a key against the car. I had Blake take me to the park­ing lot and walk me through the inci­dent. The facts and cir­cum­stances seemed con­clu­sive. Based on what Blake saw and heard, Lock­hart keyed the car.

I hired a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor to comb through Lockhart’s back­ground. The first from his fam­i­ly to go to col­lege, he joined Siev­er as an entry-lev­el man­ag­er and excelled in every job he held as he rose to the top. He’d been hap­pi­ly mar­ried for 34 years and was active in church, com­mu­ni­ty, and char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions. If he was men­tal­ly ill, he hid it well.

Since I couldn’t con­vince myself Lock­hart was lying even though Siev­er was pay­ing me, I fig­ured unbi­ased jurors might give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt. To avoid that risk, I decid­ed to try to take the case away from the jury.

The law of wrong­ful dis­charge was evolv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia. Some courts implied a com­pa­ny could fire an employ­ee only for “just cause,” an objec­tive stan­dard. Oth­ers held that a dis­charge deci­sion was law­ful if it was made in good faith. Under that stan­dard, Lockhart’s ter­mi­na­tion might be law­ful if Siev­er sin­cere­ly believed he keyed Aguilar’s car, whether or not he real­ly did it.

Cit­ing that case law, I filed a motion ask­ing the judge to enter a judg­ment in Siever’s favor as a mat­ter of law with­out a jury tri­al because there was no evi­dence Siev­er fired Lock­hart for any rea­son oth­er than its good faith belief he van­dal­ized Aguilar’s car.

As I wrote the brief in sup­port of the motion, I couldn’t answer the ques­tion that had nagged me since I took the case: Why would a pow­er­ful exec­u­tive risk his career and good name to scratch the car of an employ­ee he didn’t know?

At the hear­ing, while the judge grilled me about the lim­its of the good faith stan­dard, I noticed him star­ing at Lock­hart, sit­ting in the gallery. My nag­ging ques­tion trou­bles the judge, too, I thought. Con­vinced through­out oral argu­ment that I was going down in flames, I was shocked when the judge grant­ed my motion.

Lockhart’s lawyer was shocked, too. His Notice of Appeal hit my desk with light­ning speed.

While the appeal was pend­ing, the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor found an obscure mis­de­meanor con­vic­tion against Lock­hart. In July, 1986, a Nordstrom’s store clerk caught him try­ing to shoplift a shirt and pair of slacks tucked under his jacket.

The sim­i­lar­i­ty to the car van­dal­ism was strik­ing, a pet­ty crime Lock­hart had no rea­son to com­mit. That clinched it for me. As Ward Dun­ham had sensed, some sort of emo­tion­al prob­lem lurked beneath Lockhart’s image of right­eous probity.

It was too late to add the con­vic­tion to the record on appeal, so I put it in my pock­et. If we were reversed and the case went to tri­al, I hoped to pull a Per­ry Mason and hit Lock­hart with it on the wit­ness stand.

I didn’t get the chance. The appel­late court three-judge-pan­el ruled in Siever’s favor and Lock­hart didn’t appeal the deci­sion to the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court. His years of ser­vice and age qual­i­fied him for a sub­stan­tial pen­sion despite his dis­charge, so he aban­doned the case, took his retire­ment ben­e­fit, and moved to north­ern California’s wine country.

The case was closed. I’d secured the desired result, and Siev­er was pleased with my work. All was right with the world.

Then came the sur­prise that haunts me still. Over a six-week peri­od in the spring of 1991, three months after Lock­hart left Los Ange­les, some­one van­dal­ized four cars in Siever’s park­ing lot. All were keyed in the same man­ner as the 1986–87 inci­dents with a deep scar run­ning from head­light to tail­light. One of the four cars scratched was Joyce Aguilar’s Chevy Caprice.

“I’m cer­tain Jim van­dal­ized the first set of cars,” Ward Dun­ham told me. “As far as I’m con­cerned, that shoplift­ing con­vic­tion removes all doubt. This new wave has to be the work of a copycat.”

I wasn’t so sure. Two things wor­ried me: our case against Lock­hart turned on a sin­gle eye wit­ness; and the odds against dif­fer­ent unre­lat­ed van­dals ran­dom­ly tar­get­ing Aguilar’s Chevy Caprice four years apart seemed astro­nom­i­cal. “It might be a good idea,” I told Dun­ham, “to watch Wen­dell Blake and Joyce Aguilar for a while.”

Siev­er put Aguilar and Blake under covert sur­veil­lance at work. They did noth­ing sus­pi­cious. Time passed. No new inci­dents occurred. Siev­er dropped its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the 1991 van­dal was nev­er identified.

Thir­ty-five years after I first opened the case file, I still wor­ry that I helped destroy an inno­cent man’s career. Search­ing for reas­sur­ance as I wrote this, I found a sur­pris­ing num­ber of con­vic­tions of high­ly suc­cess­ful peo­ple for com­mit­ting sense­less small crimes. Most noto­ri­ous­ly, the actress, Winona Ryder, shoplift­ed clothes and jew­el­ry from Saks Fifth Avenue. Most of these peo­ple suf­fered from depres­sion and repressed anger. Maybe Lock­hart was such a per­son. If so, he betrayed no hint of it when I took his depo­si­tion in 1987, and in pho­tos of his eighty-eighth birth­day par­ty post­ed on an old Face­book page, he still looked like a paragon of virtue, con­tent and at peace with himself.

Who com­mit­ted these crimes? Lock­hart and a copy­cat? Blake? Aguilar? Or some­one else? Mad­den­ing­ly, I’ll nev­er know for sure. Lock­hart died peace­ful­ly at home in 2016 at the age of 91, tak­ing the truth with him to his grave.

Post Script: To pro­tect the priv­i­lege, I changed a few of the less impor­tant facts and the names of Lock­hart, the com­pa­ny, and its employees.

My sev­en­ty-fourth birth­day rolled by this month. I’ve been look­ing back since then and think­ing about turn­ing points. There are so many and they go way back. 

I almost failed the sec­ond grade. I was in love with Mrs. Halper, but her week­ly spelling tests broke my heart. She called out eight words. We scrawled the let­ters in cur­sive. She col­lect­ed the papers, cir­cled in red the ones we got wrong, and hand­ed them back to us. My paper was always the bot­tom score in the class. Almost all my words were cir­cled, test after test.

Half-way through the school year, Mrs. Halper told Mom she couldn’t pass me to the third grade unless I learned to spell. They set­tled on a plan. Mrs. Halper drew up a big list of words each week. She worked with me on it after school, then Mom sat with me at the kitchen table each night. She called out the words. I wrote them down. She cor­rect­ed them, and we did them again. And again.

I can’t pin­point the moment or explain how it hap­pened, but some­where along the line, I began to devel­op a feel for the art of orthog­ra­phy and its mad­den­ing incon­sis­ten­cies. I got four right on a test in Feb­ru­ary. Five the next week. Six a month lat­er. Mom cheered when I brought that one home.

The big moment came the week before East­er. Mrs. Halper called out the eight words. I wrote them down. Dur­ing nap time, I peeked through my fin­gers at Mrs. Halper as she grad­ed our tests. A few min­utes into it, she laid down her red pen, dabbed at her pret­ty blue eyes with a tis­sue, then smiled at me through tears. Lat­er that day, she thumb­tacked my paper to the bul­letin board, and when we went out to recess, she kissed me on the cheek. I almost fainted.

On my eleventh birth­day, my aunt and uncle from Rhode Island sent me a pack­age. I thought they were rich because their gifts nev­er came out of the Sears cat­a­log and they were always the best presents I got. I was crest­fall­en when I tore off the wrap­ping paper to find a book. I didn’t like to read. See Spot Run had turned me off ear­ly on. I’d nev­er even read a short sto­ry, much less a whole book. I noticed that this one at least had an inter­est­ing cov­er, an artist’s ren­der­ing of old coins, a map, glass of rum, and com­pass strewn across an oak­en table-top under the title: TREASURE ISLAND. Curi­ous, I turned to the first page. 

“I remem­ber him as if it were yes­ter­day, as he came plod­ding to the inn door, his sea-chest fol­low­ing behind him in a hand-bar­row — a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tar­ry pig­tail falling over the shoul­der of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, bro­ken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remem­ber him look­ing round the cov­er and whistling to him­self as he did so, and then break­ing out in that old sea-song that he sang so often after­wards: Fif­teen men on the dead man’s chest —/Yo-ho-ho, and a bot­tle of rum!”

I could see Bil­ly Bones and hear him singing as clear­ly as if he’d walked into my bed­room. Mes­mer­ized, I read on for hours. Jim, Long John, and the pirates took me across the seas in search of buried trea­sure, and I nev­er returned. Trea­sure Island became the first leg of a life-long jour­ney borne on the wings of art­ful­ly told sto­ries, wend­ing my way through a thou­sand worlds to a B.A. in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, through careers in teach­ing, law, and busi­ness, to come to rest in my sev­enth decade in Whip­poor­will Hollow. 

One of the worlds I vis­it­ed along the way was Denmark’s Elsi­nore Cas­tle in the Mid­dle Ages. When I was sev­en­teen, I walked on unsteady legs to the front of the room and stood before my class­mates, high school seniors, sit­ting in rows of desks, all look­ing at me, waiting.

Each of us had to recite from mem­o­ry the solil­o­quy from Act I, scene ii of Ham­let, 31 lines, 259 words. Pre­sent­ing it with­out fal­ter­ing would be enough to secure a good grade, but I want­ed to do more than that. Ham­let was a sad, con­flict­ed prince, plagued with self-doubt and self-loathing. Strug­gling with world-class ado­les­cent inse­cu­ri­ties, I felt Hamlet’s anguish and thought I could give his trou­bled heart a voice if I could find the courage to bare my soul in front of my friends, but courage wasn’t my strong suit. Up to that point, I’d nev­er tak­en cen­ter stage or done any­thing to set myself apart. I pre­ferred to hide in the shad­ows where it was safe, but that day, inspired by Shake­speare and a gift­ed teacher, Mr. Turn­er, I des­per­ate­ly want­ed to step for­ward into the light.

Feel­ing vul­ner­a­ble in front of my class­mates, I fixed my gaze on red­dish-gold spears of autumn sun­light com­ing through the back win­dows, then took a deep breath, and held my trem­bling hands up before me. “Oh that this too, too sol­id flesh would melt,/Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” My voice broke, then stead­ied as Hamlet’s sor­row swelled up inside me and took con­trol. “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world,” I said, mean­ing it.

The next 26 lines took me deep down inside myself to a place I’d nev­er been, where my inhi­bi­tions, doubts, and fears fell away. For one minute and fifty-five sec­onds, I melt­ed into poet­ry that seemed to have been writ­ten for me cen­turies before I was born. “But break my heart,” I said at the end, fight­ing back tears, “for I must hold my tongue.”

Dazed, I walked to my desk and sat down. Emerg­ing slow­ly from the mys­ti­cal spell of Shakespeare’s lyri­cal iambic pen­tame­ter, I real­ized every­one had turned toward me, some with big smiles, oth­ers with tears in their eyes. They were clap­ping, and the applause went on and on.

Over the fol­low­ing weeks, I pre­sent­ed oth­er scenes from Ham­let to good effect. For a daz­zling few months I had visions of becom­ing the next Richard Bur­ton, but I soon proved to be a one-trick pony, a rea­son­ably good Ham­let, but mediocre to painful­ly awful in every oth­er role, and my thes­pi­an aspi­ra­tions met a swift, mer­ci­ful death.

That per­for­mance stayed with me in a more impor­tant way, though. It became a small cor­ner­stone of con­fi­dence, the first stone set in the con­struc­tion of a long life.

I’d like to pre­tend here that I’m self-made, that hard work, sac­ri­fice, and tal­ent brought me to the good place where I find myself today, but look­ing back with a clear eye, I see a thou­sand turn­ing points where flat-out pure luck played the deci­sive role and a thou­sand more where I couldn’t have gone for­ward with­out the help of some­one who extend­ed a hand to me gra­tu­itous­ly and unbidden.

A few years ago, a guy I hadn’t seen in fifty years tracked me down to thank me for talk­ing him out of quit­ting our col­lege fra­ter­ni­ty when he was a pledge. He said I saved him from mak­ing a life-alter­ing mis­take. I appre­ci­at­ed his thanks, but won­dered why he went to so much trou­ble. It was such a small thing that hap­pened so long ago.

He died the fol­low­ing year, and I learned he’d been fight­ing can­cer for a long time. I under­stood then. I was one of many on a long list. 

Mrs. Halper, Mom, my aunt and uncle, Mr. Turn­er, and so many of those who helped me are gone now. I thanked some of them before they left. I wish I had a sec­ond chance with the others.

Many are still here. My list is long, too, but I’m for­tu­nate. I have time. 

Post Script: Suzie Glass and I were the last two kids stand­ing in the sev­enth-grade spelling bee when the proc­tor called out the word “medieval.” It sat me down and Suzie won. To this day, that word aggra­vates me. Say it out loud, then explain to me why in hell it’s spelled like that. 

On its final approach to the Win­nipeg Air­port, Safeway’s com­pa­ny jet glid­ed through the air smooth­ly, as always. I sat in a plush leather buck­et-seat fac­ing for­ward. The CEO sat across the aisle to my left. A Senior Vice Pres­i­dent sat direct­ly behind the cock­pit, fac­ing us. The cock­pit door was open with a cur­tain drawn across it. We couldn’t see the pilot and co-pilot, but we heard the drone of their con­ver­sa­tion with air traf­fic control.

The three of us from Safe­way were chat­ting ami­ably when some­thing hit us mid-air. There was a loud thud; the plane shud­dered; and the pilot screamed.

I flinched and clenched the arms of my chair. The exec­u­tive fac­ing me looked like she’d been punched in the gut, and the CEO let out a muf­fled cry. The plane dipped for­ward. The engines sput­tered, skipped a few beats, then caught hold again, and the jet lev­eled off, resum­ing its grad­ual descent. The entire inci­dent con­sumed only a few sec­onds, just long enough for my life to pass before me. 

“Every­thing all right?” the CEO said to the cock­pit, his voice shaking.

“We’re good,” the co-pilot said.

“Valerie?” the CEO said.

“Sor­ry for the out­burst.” Her voice was calm, reas­sur­ing. “We hit a goose. Bloody mess on Greg’s wind­shield, but we’re fine. We’ll touch down safe­ly in a few moments.”

The CEO didn’t look con­vinced. I wasn’t either, but the pilot was true to her word. In less than a minute, we were coast­ing to the terminal. 

Stand­ing on the tar­mac, I looked up at the face of the jet. A bas­ket­ball-sized gash dent­ed the nosecone. Blood, entrails, and feath­ers cov­ered the co-pilot’s wind­shield. Win­nipeg is the cap­i­tal of Man­i­to­ba, the Cana­di­an province known as the land of a hun­dred thou­sand lakes. Thou­sands of geese flock to the lakes in the sum­mer and pose a flight risk to air­craft on approach to the air­port. The pilot said we were lucky. On one of her flights, a goose blew out the wind­shield and splat­tered innards all over the cockpit.

Prac­tic­ing law and serv­ing as a Safe­way exec­u­tive, I was a pas­sen­ger on scores of pri­vate jet flights. Oth­er than the goose col­li­sion, they were all seri­ous mood-enhancers. No crowds to fight. No lines. A car dri­ves you right up to the plane. It takes off when you’re ready. The cab­ins are spa­cious, lux­u­ri­ous, and com­fort­able. A stew­ard serves Caber­net Sauvi­gnon in crys­tal glass­ware and gourmet meals on fine china.

I’ve also flown more than three hun­dred com­mer­cial flights. When I worked at Safe­way, I flew on South­west Air­lines cat­tle cars so often South­west named me Bur­bank Air­port pas­sen­ger of the year three years in a row. All South­west seats are coach class with pas­sen­gers packed in like sar­dines. No reserved seat­ing; first come, first served. More often than not, I was trapped in a mid­dle seat, includ­ing an unfor­get­table adven­ture sit­ting between a three hun­dred pound guy spilling over my arm­rest and a young moth­er with a scream­ing baby in her lap. No gourmet meals on South­west. I was lucky to get a Diet Coke in a plas­tic cup, and if the flight atten­dant liked me, two bags of fif­teen peanuts each instead of the stan­dard one bag per pas­sen­ger. Giv­en a choice, any sane per­son would choose to fly on a pri­vate jet rather than a South­west 737 or any oth­er com­mer­cial plane.

Unless that per­son is con­cerned about CO2 emis­sions. Pri­vate jets are big-time pol­luters on a pas­sen­ger per capi­ta basis. Because of the low pas­sen­ger load, a pri­vate jet pas­sen­ger gen­er­ates some­where between twen­ty and forty times the car­bon emis­sions of a com­mer­cial passenger.

Based on that data, you would expect envi­ron­men­tal­ists to scream to high heav­en for the abo­li­tion of pri­vate jet trav­el. There are some loud voic­es com­ing from less­er-known advo­cates, but most high-pro­file cli­mate change reform­ers are wealthy pri­vate jet fre­quent-fliers. Liv­ing in glass man­sions, they don’t throw stones.

Pres­i­dent Biden’s cli­mate czar, John Ker­ry, recent­ly flew to Ice­land on a pri­vate jet to accept an award for his work on cli­mate change. The irony of his trans­porta­tion mode was lost on him. “(I)t’s the only choice for some­body like me who is trav­el­ing the world to win this bat­tle,” he said. “I believe, the time it takes me to get some­where, I can’t sail across the ocean. I have to fly, meet with peo­ple, and get things done.” His expla­na­tion telling­ly ignores com­mer­cial flights, as though that option doesn’t exist for “some­body like me.”

The Unit­ed Nations recent­ly reap­point­ed Michael Bloomberg as its cli­mate envoy. Bloomberg will ful­fill his duties by trav­el­ing the world on his fleet of pri­vate jets. He does not see this as incon­sis­tent with cli­mate change reform. As a Bloomberg pub­li­ca­tion explains, “For many peo­ple, pri­vate jets seem like an extrav­a­gance. But for busy exec­u­tives and celebri­ties, the time sav­ings, con­ve­nience, and extra secu­ri­ty they offer make them more of a neces­si­ty.” From 2016 to 2020, Bloomberg flew more than 1,700 such nec­es­sary flights, emit­ting more than 10,000 tons of carbon. 

Bill Gates funds many wor­thy clean ener­gy projects. He owns four jets, which he refers to as his “guilty plea­sure.” In 2017, they spewed more than 1600 tons of car­bon into the atmosphere.

In 2019, the world’s A‑list of cli­mate change lumi­nar­ies flew 114 pri­vate jets to Italy to attend a sum­mit on glob­al warm­ing orga­nized by Google.  Google exec­u­tives own ten pri­vate jets, two Boe­ing air­lin­ers, and a fight­er jet.

Some wealthy cli­mate change advo­cates claim they off­set pri­vate jet emis­sions by pur­chas­ing car­bon cred­its. A Bloomberg arti­cle sug­gests con­ve­nient ways to do this. “You can off­set a ton of CO2 by donat­ing $18 to a refor­esta­tion effort in East Tim­or or by giv­ing $15 to a pro­gram that pro­vides fuel-effi­cient stoves for women in North Darfur.” 

The account­ing looks fishy, but even if it’s cor­rect, you’d need to stack stoves ten high in every needy North Dar­fur kitchen to off­set Bloomberg’s emis­sions alone. Besides, you would expect com­mit­ted envi­ron­men­tal­ists to advo­cate accom­plish­ing both goals simul­ta­ne­ous­ly – fund­ing the reduc­tion of car­bon emis­sions in poor nations while also great­ly reduc­ing air trav­el pol­lu­tion by fly­ing com­mer­cial. And yet, in research­ing this post, I found no wealthy envi­ron­men­tal­ist who set such an example.

This is not because fly­ing pri­vate is a neces­si­ty for busy exec­u­tives and celebri­ties, as Ker­ry and Bloomberg sug­gest. At Safe­way, exec­u­tives flew com­mer­cial before the com­pa­ny pur­chased the Gulf­stream. It took more time; some­times we had to bring along secu­ri­ty per­son­nel; and it was dif­fi­cult to match our trav­el demands with com­mer­cial flight sched­ules. But we man­aged to work around the dis­ad­van­tages and still achieve our goals. 

Fly­ing pri­vate is a will­ful choice based on con­ve­nience and com­fort. Busy exec­u­tives, celebri­ties, and wealthy envi­ron­men­tal­ists don’t want to fight their way through crowd­ed air­ports, suf­fer indef­i­nite­ly delayed take-offs, sit on planes with three hun­dred pound guys and scream­ing babies, miss con­nect­ing flights, and lose their luggage. 

As some­one who has flown too many miles on com­mer­cial flights, I get that. What I don’t get is the wealthy envi­ron­men­tal­ists’ pre­sump­tion that they can lead the charge against glob­al warm­ing from a pri­vate jet’s plush leather seat while sip­ping Caber­net Sauvi­gnon. Appar­ent­ly, they think they can per­suade the mass­es to make painful lifestyle changes while refus­ing to forego a lux­u­ri­ous “guilty plea­sure” that pro­duces car­bon foot­prints thou­sands of times greater than that of the aver­age person.

I don’t think so.

“Lead by exam­ple” is a time-worn max­im for a rea­son. If they want to change the world, park the jets.

Post Script: As South­west Air­lines Bur­bank Air­port Pas­sen­ger of the Year, my major award was a free South­west flight to Chica­go to an open-bar par­ty. I couldn’t face yet anoth­er com­mer­cial flight even for free booze. I declined all three years.