In the depth of each winter, local nature enthusiasts gather in Carbondale and Aspen every two weeks for the Naturalist Nights speaker series. This is the 25th year that the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) and Wilderness Workshop have carried the tradition. Past events featured high-altitude mountaineers, conservation specialists, activists and even politicians. The first talk of 2025 took place Jan. 8-9, hosting Auden Schendler, senior vice president of sustainability for Aspen One, aka Aspen Skiing Company.
Schendler has worked in sustainability for nearly 30 years. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1992, he spent several years teaching high school and facilitating Outward Bound programs. By 1996, he joined the Rocky Mountain Institute, a local think tank. Aspen SkiCo hired him as vice president of sustainability three years later. Schendler’s first book, “Getting Green Done,” is now over 15 years old.
In November, Schendler’s second book was published: “Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul.” At the Jan. 9 talk at the Pitkin County Library, Schendler opened his presentation by focusing on joy. He spoke less to specific chapters of the new book and more to the broad topics of the climate crisis, human existence and paths he sees toward real change.
A video of his son chopping wood cut open a conceptual cross-section about human connection and disconnection. What do people care about, as people? Schendler invited the audience to consider. He named popular, common sense answers: kids, friends, home, family. “What do you do to protect those things?” Schendler asked, before asserting that too many people say (and do) “nothing.”
Schendler wove many of the cultural roots that inspire him into his commentary. He interlaced the Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia, the highest condition of human thriving, with the Aspen Idea and an emphatic defense of skiing as a sport and a hobby. “The vision of Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke was that you come to a place that is so beautiful that you’re outside your regular life and explore new experiences and ideas, then go out into the world and act to improve the world,” he said. As for sliding on snow, “Skiing isn’t a luxury; it’s an example that humans need leisure in various forms to be able to contribute to society.”
Many contemporary writers and musicians have popular work that examines themes of alienation, overwhelm and survival. Schendler referenced Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Cormac McCarthy in succession. “You can’t be living a life where all you’re doing is trying to survive, where like in McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ you’re just trying to get by.” We find ourselves in a society where we don’t do or get to do the things that make us thrive, Schendler said. “You need to be able to pause, to take a walk in a park, to sit outside.”
From this broad framing, Schendler focused on the climate crisis. He shared data maps about changing temperatures and strained ocean current patterns, and strong words about what those numbers and images mean. “The problem with climate today,” Schendler said, “is the Paris Agreement said 1.5 [Celsius] over pre-industrial times. We’re going to blow past 1.5. We’re going to blow past 2. We’re currently on track for 3.3 to 4, and that’s not factoring in the acceleration of emissions.”
Schendler condemned greenwashing and most corporate sustainability efforts. He asserted that company emission reduction targets and glossy ad campaigns about energy use don’t address the systems-level damage of climate change. “That’s American environmentalism. That’s corporate sustainability. That’s a problem.” What does Schendler recommend instead? Companies messaging customers and nudging them to better engage and organize as citizens.
“We know how to do revolution, and we’ve done it through history. We’ve done it reasonably.”
Corporations and governments fear power-wielding and challenges to any given status quo, Schendler said. As examples of subversive power-wielding, he cited Protect Our Winters infographics on ski lifts and the 2018-launched Give A Flake ad campaign. Part of that campaign, calling out U.S. politicians, was one of the first times that Lisa Murkowski and other targeted colleagues felt direct political pain for inadequate action on climate, said Schendler.
Despite increasingly frequent climate events and social pressures, Schendler holds on to a sense of optimism. “The story we like most to tell ourselves is a battle against impossible odds that we continue to fight and we never win. We fight impossible battles. That’s what we do as humans.” He hopes that “Terrible Beauty” will inspire readers toward that challenge and that the book will be received as a descendant of “Walden,” “Sand County Almanac” and “Silent Spring.”Delia Malone is the presenter for this week’s Naturalist Nights topic, “Beavers are for Birds,” at the Third Street Center on Jan. 22 and Pitkin County Library Jan. 23. The remaining events in the series will be Feb. 5-6, Feb. 19-20 and March 5-6, regarding tribal engagement with watersheds, ecological impacts from recreation and post-fire restoration work, respectively. You can learn more and register for any of these free events at www.aspennature.org or www.wildernessworkshop.org