In his new book, “Terrible Beauty,” Aspen’s outgoing senior vice president of sustainability, Auden Schendler, makes a compelling case for companies in the ski industry and far beyond breaking out of the collective malaise that’s coopting corporate climate activism and has been largely self-imposed – quite ingeniously — by the obfuscation efforts of the fossil fuel industry.
“Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul” quickly dispenses with the notion that people and corporations should hold back on calling for rapid societal changes to combat the worst effects of climate change because they see themselves as part of the problem and don’t want to appear hypocritical.
“The thesis is that if you were the fossil fuel industry and you wanted to essentially take corporations out of the picture environmentally — recognizing that corporations are powerful, they’re influential, people respect them, they have huge reach — the suite of things that you would want them to do to appear to care about the environment but to not actually disrupt your ability to explore and burn fossil fuels … would be all the conventional practices we refer to as ESGCSR,” Schendler says of standard Environmental, Social Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility practices.
“What would meaningful action look like?” Schendler asks of the corporate sector. “And that’s sort of the nut of the second half of my book is, ‘Well, what would it look like to actually drive change? And that’s where we get into the kind of meat of what the fix is. But the thing that drives change is a corporation wielding power and intervening on really big stuff, climate policy, elections, calling out trade groups that have not done enough, resigning from trade groups, that kind of thing.”
Schendler has engaged in all of these tactics while working for the privately held family company that owns Aspen, including aggressively calling out the fossil fuel industry in corporate reports and working from within to help transform the local electric coop, Holy Cross Energy in Glenwood Springs, into one of the most progressive renewable energy utilities in the nation. What companies and individuals cannot continue to do is blame themselves, Schendler argues.
Asked for examples of that, and the role fossil fuel companies have played in shifting the blame, Schendler points to the crying Native American TV ads of the 1970s that blamed plastic pollution on individuals instead of the companies flooding the marketplace with single-use plastic bottles and packaging at the behest of the petroleum industry. Another example he uses is British Petroleum’s now-infamous carbon footprint calculator that implies individual responsibility.
“Boom, can’t talk, we’re silenced. But let’s dig in a little bit,” Schendler says. “Citizens and businesses never said, ‘Hey, can you provide me with a series of services, heat, cold beer, hot showers, transportation, energy to run lifts? And by the way, would you provide that in a way that will eventually destroy civilization?’ That’s not what they said. They said, ‘provide that cheaply, please.’ And the energy industry did that masterfully and wonderfully and in ways that were good for society with coal and natural gas and oil.
“In about 1950 the scientific community started to realize that the CO2 emissions from that was a problem,” Schendler adds. “What a functional society would’ve done at that point would’ve been to use science to drive public policy and say, ‘Hey, you know what? There’s a problem here. We don’t have to move fast, but over time, let’s phase out of fossil fuel energy and let’s phase in renewables.’ Jimmy Carter in 1980 said, “We should get 20% of our electricity from solar by year 2000.’ What if we had done that? So now, instead of the way things should go in a democracy, the fossil fuel industry — starting in the 70s ExxonMobil understood the science — buried it, obfuscated it, funded doubt in society, science, bought politicians. And so, you, me, corporations, we didn’t get to make decisions based on science that was deprived of us.”
A nationally renowned climate policy advocate, Schendler is transitioning out of Aspen One (formerly the Aspen Skiing Company) in March, prompting the following lengthy statement from Aspen One Director of Communications and PR Hannah Dixon:
“Aspen One has been a leader in innovative sustainability practices for decades, and our commitment to climate and our broader advocacy agenda continues. As part of that commitment, this winter our SVP of Sustainability Auden Schendler will begin to transition out of the day-to-day role he has held for 26 years and pass the leadership baton to Chris Miller who will become Aspen One SVP of Sustainability and Advocacy in early 2025.
“We are beyond thrilled to be able to attract a world-class talent such as Chris Miller—and it is a testament to our track record in this space. Chris comes to us from Ben & Jerry’s, where he has been Global Social Mission Director for the last decade. During his tenure there, he led their award-winning sustainability and corporate activism model—one of the most innovative amongst global, value-anchored brands. Earlier in his career, he held a similar role at Seventh Generation, as well as years in public policy and advocacy with Greenpeace and on Bernie Sanders’ Capitol Hill staff.
“Auden and Chris will work together to transition in early 2025, and thereafter Auden will continue to partner with Aspen One in an advisory role while he expands his impact more broadly in the sustainability space and beyond. We are incredibly grateful for Auden’s innovative leadership, significant impact, and steadfast partnership over the decades and he will always be part of the Aspen One family.”
