ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Our guest for this episode is Auden Schendler, the author of a new book called “Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul”. Published by Harvard Business Review Press, it is part memoir, part reflection, and part prescription from 30 years of working in corporate sustainability.
If you aren’t familiar with Auden, he learned about corporate sustainability at the Rocky Mountain Institute, which was co-founded by Amory Lovins, who was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time in 2009 and considered the Einstein of energy efficiency. Auden then moved on to Aspen Ski Company where he worked from 1999 to earlier this year as its Vice President and then Senior Vice President of Sustainability. He’s been named a "climate innovator" by TIME magazine and a "climate saver" by the EPA.
In this episode, we talk about Auden's journey from growing up in New Jersey during the environmental decay of the 1970s and spending time with extended family in North Dakota - a place where we found the natural world as a refuge - to his work in local politics in Colorado and in the ski industry.
Our conversation though centers on the ideas in the book Terrible Beauty. As Auden says "climate changes threatens everything we care about" so we need to be willing to do the hard work as citizens to bring about real change. He also shares a few ideas about how corporate leaders can go beyond corporate sustainability as usual that just upholds our fossil fuel economy to get to a place where they are using the power of their brand to push for systemic change.
However, the book is unlike any other sustainability book or article I've ever read. Auden makes a more joyful case about how we be engage our role as citizens to build community and ultimately drive change that allows us all to thrive - as a parent, as a corporate leader or by just contributing to the place we live.
You can buy the book at audenschendler.com, and read a few endorsements from people far more noteworthy than me such as Conrad Anker, Bill McKibben and former White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy.
