The shape of personal action: "I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle."

Mary Annaïse Heglar is a climate justice essayist and the director of publications at the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York.

I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle (Vox)

Stop obsessing over your environmental “sins.” Fight the oil and gas industry instead.

I’m at my friend’s birthday dinner when an all-too-familiar conversation unfolds. I introduce myself to the man to my left, tell him that I work in the environmental field, and his face freezes in terror. Our handshake goes limp.

“You’re gonna hate me …” he mutters sheepishly, his voice barely audible over the clanging silverware.

I knew what was coming. He regaled me with a laundry list of environmental mistakes from just that day: He’d ordered lunch and it came in plastic containers; he’d eaten meat and he was about to order it again; he’d even taken a cab to this very party.

I could hear the shame in his voice. I assured him that I didn’t hate him, but that I hated the industries that placed him — and all of us — in the same trick bag. Then his shoulders lifted from their slump and his eyes met mine. “Yeah, ’cause there’s really no point trying to save the planet anymore, right?”

Snip to the end.

Here’s my confession: I don’t care how green you are. I want you in the movement for climate justice.

I don’t care how long you’ve been engaged in the climate conversation, 10 years or 10 seconds. I don’t care how many statistics you can rattle off. I don’t need you to be all-solar-everything to be an environmentalist. I don’t need you to be vegan-er than thou, or me, for that matter. I don’t care if you are eating a burger right this minute.

I don’t even care if you work on an oil rig. In some parts of the country, those are the only jobs that pay enough for you to feed your family. And I don’t blame workers for that. I blame their employers. I blame the industry that is choking us all, and the government that is letting them do it.

All I need you to do is want a livable future. This is your planet, and no one can advocate for it like you can. No one can protect it like you can.

We have 11 years — not to start but to finish saving the planet.

I’m not here to absolve you. And I’m not here to abdicate you. I am here to fight with you.

A bold statement in corporate nothingness: "When Bad Policy Makes An Entire Country Sick, Business Must Lead," unless the Chamber says otherwise.

For perhaps the first time in this blog's storied history, LinkedIn (say what?) provides an interesting ... er, "link."

Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the musing is interesting primarily because of what it cannot bring itself to say.

Relying on the CEO of a major-corporate-anything to produce a coherent argument seems destined for the heartache of underachievement. It's about making money, damn it -- why all this self-defeating ethical chatter?

It's as though Battelle found himself close to an insight before feeling the gentle tug of the US Chamber of Commerce on his sleeve:

"Look, guys and gals and fellow robber barons, I can see the enemy and He is Us ... wait, what's that?"

(Wendy Dant Chesser's umbrella tip pierces his skin, and a relaxed expression comes over him. There are billowing clouds, fields of flowers and record profits)

"On second thought, it's the system -- that's it, the system, not the willing producers of poison."

Right on. We're proud of you. A plaque's in the mail.

Even so, a perusal of the hundreds of comments affixed to this muddled expression of Disney envy yields sheer terror -- first, that LinkedIn is valued at all as a social media outlet (disclosure: I have an account because of the NABC sales experience, and go there seldom precisely because I'm no longer a sales person, and the site is largely insipid), and second, that corporate America toes the zombie-speak chamber line this firmly, to the exclusion of all human reason.

In short: When you're busy serving as a paid apologist for the 1%, you don't want to be troubled by introspection.

It doesn't pay, does it?

When Bad Policy Makes An Entire Country Sick, Business Must Lead, by John Battelle

Walking around Disneyland with my daughter the other night, I found myself face to face with one of our country’s most intractable taboos.

(Disneyland is still awesome for me, as a kid from 1970s LA. Truly magical.)

If you’re an observer of crowds, one of the more prominent features of the Disneyland crowd is how generally overweight our country has become (I live in the Bay area, and readily admit my interaction with folks on most days is not representative of a broad cross section of our population). I’d estimate at least a third of the folks at Disney are seeing Mike and Molly-level images in the mirror — and about 2–3% or so have more weight than they can carry around, and have therefore graduated to “mobility scooters.”

These industrial strength scooters have become commonplace at the Happiest Place on Earth. I’m guessing from the name that they were initially created for disabled and elderly folks, but clearly they’ve been reinforced for more rigorous duty. For every one of them we saw piloted by a fellow with a knee brace or an elderly grandmother, there were ten requisitioned for moving Big People around.

For a spell, I sat on a bench with my daughter and watched them wheel by ...

Jim Wright: "So, in 2017, let us resolve to be the people we want to be."

I freely admit to having read many snippets of Jim Wright's writing over the years, while never really bothering to delve any deeper.

This may have been a mistake on my part. First, about the author.

Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lives in Alaska where he watches American politics in a perpetual state of amused disgust. He's been called the Tool of Satan, but he prefers to think of himself as the Devil's Designated Driver. He is the mind behind Stonekettle Station. You can email him at jim@stonekettle.com. You can follow him on Twitter @stonekettle, or you can join the boisterous bunch he hosts on Facebook at Facebook/Stonekettle. Remember to bring brownies and mind the white cat, he bites. Hard.

On Monday afternoon, Wright published these thoughts at Facebook, then later at his own blog. He summarizes the way I'm feeling about Our Lives in a Time of Trump, and so I'm teasing with his conclusion only. You simply must go to Wright's page and read the entire piece, which will be one of my personal touchstones as these thrilling months gather steam.

Resolutions, by Jim Wright (Stonekettle Station)

Author’s preface: This began as a post on Facebook. But the ideals outlined below apply to all of my social interactions, online and off. And because, a) not everybody who reads Stonekettle Station or follows me on Twitter subscribes to my Facebook page, and b) my Facebook page is subject to continuous attack by those who violently disagree with my viewpoint and my right to express such and therefor commenting is perforce limited to less than 5% of the people who follow me there, and because c) there is no such limitation here, I’m reposting this here on Stonekettle Station, expanded from the original Facebook post. // Jim

... We have to be the people we want to be – otherwise there is no point. And it's hard, being that person. No doubt. But the things in life most worthwhile usually are.

If you lay claim to the moral high ground, then you have to hold the moral high ground.

So, in 2017, let us resolve to be the people we want to be.

Let us stand together against the fall of night.

And let us always remember history is on our side if only we have the fortitude to see it through.

Nash on Fox.

Last week, I loaded the car with NABC draft beer and dispensing equipment, and Tony joined me for the Jeffersonville Main Street chili cook-off. We poured shot-sized samples for three hours and "shot" the breeze with attendees. As usual, it was great fun.

While reloading the jockey box for the trip back to Bank Street Brewhouse, I inadvertently jostled the taps and spilled beer on the seat. Our standard black tablecloth served as a convenient, impromptu mop-up towel. After all, it could be washed later ... except I forgot to take it into the house for laundering.

Next morning, there was another errand to run, one too big for walking, and when I settled reluctantly into the car, there was a pervasive aroma of stale beer (and a wee trace of the cigar smoked some days before). Suddenly I felt thirty years younger. Once upon a time, this sensation was every morning's olfactory prompting, and usually the previous evening's empties remained buried somewhere under debris in the back seat.

Sometimes back then there was a full bottle or can smiling at me, still cool to the touch.

Sometimes back then, I drank it for breakfast.

That was then, and this is now. In between, there was (and remains) a process of personal evolution, filled with a litany of drinking and driving mistakes that fortunately did no harm. Since my involvement with NABC in 1992, through two apartments, two houses and two marriages, it has been my strategy to live as close to work (beers) as possible. Drunk walking might be bad, but it pales by comparison to drunk driving. No one's perfect, but I'm a lot better than I used to be.

A beer-centered life has led to other insights emanating from the imperative to be responsible. Because long ago I chose drink to be a part of my existence, and saw first-hand the way Europeans did it, there developed a commensurate antipathy to the American auto-centric ways of life and sprawl. To me, a drinker who isn't an advocate of urbanized public transit simply isn't paying attention.

In his column last week, Matt Nash writes about county attorney Rick Fox's recent DUI. I've nothing remotely snarky to say about this. How could I, when I've been there before?

Matt is right to state that drinkers are obliged to organize their lives responsibly, and for those of us in the business of serving alcoholic beverages, it is a pervasive consideration that governs every moment of our working lives -- at least it should be, although I know full well that for too many operators, it isn't.

While we inhabit different ends of the political spectrum, Rick's a good guy and a valued downtown neighbor ... and balance in one's enjoyment of adult beverages can be wickedly hard to find and maintain. That's true for all of us who choose to imbibe. As Winston Churchill understood, the goal is to take more out of drink than it takes out of you. No one said it would be easy, and we've organized a transportation grid to make it even harder. But we have to do our best.

All I can say is what I've said for a very long time: Think when you drink. I wish Rick the best. He's a bright fellow, and he'll learn from it.

NASH: Commissioners should use DUI to set an example, by Matthew Nash (Proverb Coagulator)

Getting pulled over for driving under the influence is an embarrassing situation, but being embarrassed is not punishment enough for the crime.

Nash: "Bicycle riders do belong on the road."

It's another excellent column by Matt Nash, one generating a reasonable discussion at the newspaper's pop-up, roll-over littered website. I covered this ground previously ...

Cars are bad enough. Walk it across, for safety's sake.

... but Matt expands nicely on the theme, and does so forcefully. Good work. Please brave the newspaper's impediments to Internet civility, and check it out.

NASH: We have to share the road, by Matt Nash

... I still believe the cyclist was wrong, as the one who had the ability to go the fastest and inflict the most damage, he had a responsibility to make sure he avoided the pedestrian. At the very least he should have stopped and let the walker pass by. Some have also suggested that he should have pushed his bike across the span. No matter what method he should have used, he had the burden to ensure that both parties made it across the bridge safely.

"Thus, I got up early and I left early in case of a traffic jam."

Echoing former councilman Kochert's pithy exhortation to rise early, my friend Kurt made this sensible comment on a Facebook thread about the Thursday evening city council meeting -- specifically, the resolution against bridge tolling, and CM Zurschmiede's strange rationale that traffic jams cause his son to be late for work -- therefore, we should reduce traffic jams by tolling to build bridges and ... well, attract more traffic jams.

Note also that during a Facebook discussion, Zurschmiede recently compared the "choice" of bridge tolls for end users with the option of consumers to buy Starbucks coffee, and matters begin to get worrisome. Take it away, Kurt.

The Zurschmiede comment deserves a second statement.

I have been taking my son to a school off of Brownsboro Road for the past 3 years. For nearly 1 1/2 years I made this drive from Georgetown, Indiana (now I make it from Jeffersonville). I take my son in the morning - work in New Albany - and pick my son up in the afternoon, crossing the bridge 4 times.

Over three years I was late no more than a few times. How did I achieve this? I value my son's attendance record. 5-10 minutes late gets him a tardy and I view me getting him to school late as a failure on my part as a parent. Thus, I got up early and I left early in case of a traffic jam. I don't think I'm a saint for this; I just did what a responsible parent should do.

Had I been at that meeting I would have let Zurschmiede have it on that comment about his tardy son. I work in social services - i.e. I don't get paid a whole lot - and a potential $12 to cross the bridge in a day is a lot of money to me.

If Zurschmiede's son can't manage to get to work on time I would suggest he look at the lessons he instilled in his son. I would also suggest to the workplace of the tardy boy to consider hiring someone else - there are a lot of people in desperate need of employment right now - and given the opportunity for work, I am sure they wouldn't be late.