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Feature
Missive from the Front Lines: Getting Green Done
A Conversation with Auden Schendler
by Sydney L. Murray
*Photo 1 by Renit Geller. *Photo 2 by LittleMan
We live in a time of great promise, as well as great change. What we do will affect tomorrow. I spent last night during the third annual Earth Hour in quiet contemplation of my daily actions and considered how I could impact global change. I sat with friends in a candlelit room and we spoke of how we wanted to leave our world: better than when we arrived. The point is that we can enact change by acting collectively.
Auden Schendler’s new book, Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution, makes the point that if going green and becoming sustainable were so easy, wouldn’t we have done it already?
Schendler is letting us know that all of our efforts are not lacking in value, but that to truly make an impact on global climate change, we need to create a worldwide-unified effort—not only individually but simultaneously within our governments and our corporations. Our individual efforts do matter, but we will truly create change when we can collectively work toward permanent shifts within corporate and government practices, determining together how we as a nation and a world change the way we do business and operate on a daily basis.
Looking at how trendy sustainability has become, Schendler advocates that real change must come at a cost that goes beyond individual consumption habits. He looks through the eyes of the multi-national CEO and the inveterate farm worker.
Vision Magazine: What will it take for Americans to realize that going green is more cost efficient than waste?
Auden Schendler: I’m not sure that we want to sell it with that message. Based on my 15 years of experience, I can say that certain things are cost effective. It makes sense to solve climate change in the grand scheme of things. It’s much more expensive to let climate change happen than it is to solve it, even though solving it is going to be hugely expensive.
The problem is that for most people, cost effective means getting a return on investment in less than 10 years and some solutions don’t pay back in that time period. Some of it has great payback; some of it has longer term payback. It’s all good for our future prosperity but some of it is going to seem very expensive and painful. I tell people, this is going to hurt, we’re going to have to break things and it’s going to be unpleasant. It’s not just going to be a matter of changing your light bulb to save energy and money. It’s not that simple and it’s very messy. It’s one of the greatest—maybe the greatest—transformations society has had to undertake. And like other positive transformations, such as the American Revolution or civil rights, it’s going to hurt—but it’s going to be worth it.
VM: What is the most important lesson you took from the Rocky Mountain Institute?
AS: There were two important lessons. The first one was the idea that you need to think about things in terms of what you want, not how to get there. In other words, many people say that the solution to our energy problems is to build more power. But the Rocky Mountain Institute says that what you want is the ability to provide yourself with cold beer, hot coffee, hot showers, and transportation. You’re not necessarily looking for oil, coal, or nuclear power. And so the idea is what they call, “induce least cost.” How do you get what you want at the least cost? There are ways to achieve our goals that we’re not often thinking about. For example, you can save energy much more cheaply than you can make it. And consumers don’t care if their beer is cold by efficient or dirty power; they just want cold beer and induce least cost.
The other big lesson I learned is the difference between theory and practice. I think there is a huge gap between these beautiful ideas of greening and actually implementing them. I realized the importance of being very honest about the challenge of implementation. Let’s say you tell people that green building is cheaper, it gets you a better building, and it’s not that hard. Then when they do it and find out that it’s actually more expensive and it’s really hard, you lose them from the movement. Instead, I’ve learned to tell people that with green building, you get a better product and it will save money down the line. It’s not particularly easy and it might be more expensive, but we need to do it for a host of good reasons.
VM: What does the word sustainability mean to you?
AS: When I started out, I found that at every conference, the keynote speaker would stand up and say, “What is sustainability? It’s so hard to define.” And then they’d use that United Nations Brundtland Commission definition: “to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” But it’s not that complicated. Sustainability means staying in business forever—with whatever your business is. If your business is parenthood, you need to solve climate, make sure your kids can have jobs, clean water and shelter. Essentially, how can parenthood last forever? If you’re a business, it’s the same thing. We’re a ski resort; part of our forever business model is that we have to solve climate.
VM: In your book, you discuss common myths of pursuing sustainability. Could you talk about some of those?
AS: The big myth is that it’s going to be easy and profitable all the time. It’s going to be a rough battle so let’s prepare for that. Another big myth is that driving a Prius, using hemp shopping bags, and keeping your heat down are going to solve climate. They’re not. Climate is a gigantic problem beyond most people’s comprehension. If everyone who was so inclined did all the things that they should do, we still wouldn’t solve this problem.
I’m not saying individual action doesn’t matter; I’m saying, do it, but don’t be under the illusion that that is where your work ends. You have to figure out how you can make everyone in the world do all those things that are sensible, like the Prius and the [energy efficient] light bulbs. This is going to be a policy solution. It doesn’t matter if you’re a free market person and you don’t like government—it’s too bad. We only have 10 years to solve the problem. You’re not going to solve it without a major policy hammer.
VM: In your opinion, what is the most promising path to clean energy?
AS: Bill McKibben says, “There’s no silver bullet, just lots of silver buckshot.” The solution is going to be open-mindedness and keeping everything on the table. According to Princeton professors [Robert] Socolow and [Stephen] Pacala, who did this list of wedges that would solve climate, it’s going to be a combination of things some people like and others don’t, such as efficiency, nuclear power, gas and coal, wind, geothermal, and solar. Then it’s going to be other things we haven’t figured out yet. It’s doing everything you can and trying everything: policy, changes in lifestyle, and changes in how we build cities. It’s a huge conglomerate of different actions. It’s not like wind is going to save us—that’s absurd. It’s got to be a broad effort and a combination of things.
VM: What are the biggest barriers to creating change and how do you address them in your work?
AS: The biggest barrier is that for 20, maybe 30 years, large fossil fuel interests, like ExxonMobil, have admittedly been dumping money into the most successful and destructive marketing campaign in history: to put doubt into people’s minds on the science of climate. This has become a gigantic obstacle because many people, including those in Congress, don’t believe we have a problem. This is in stark contrast to the scientific community [which believes] without exception that climate change is a problem and it’s human-caused.
It’s as if I said to you, hey, did you know that Vitamin A can stunt your child’s growth, even in small doses? Well, that’s not true, but if I said it to you, I’ve now injected doubt into your mind and it was really easy to do. That’s what’s happened with climate and the marketing by the fossil interests. It’s exactly what happened with tobacco—and some of the same people are involved. So the big obstacle is: How do we get past this? People like Al Gore and others have said that maybe climate is entirely a marketing problem because if you don’t get this understanding and buy-in, it’s going to be very hard to pass legislation. I encounter that every single day as a huge barrier.
VM: What can we do as individuals to get big businesses to implement change?
AS: I think the biggest things individuals can do is get politically active, whether that means writing letters, lobbying, protesting, or becoming part of a town council. It’s good to buy certain products that are green, but I don’t think it ends there. You’ve got to write those companies’ CEOs and say that you bought the product because of their green programs. Write the companies that aren’t doing it and ask them why they don’t have it. That’s where consumers can have influence. It’s not just using your dollars; it’s using your pen. If the CEO of even a large company gets 10 handwritten letters on the same topic from individuals, there’s going to be a meeting on that—I guarantee it. It certainly would happen with my company. So people do have this influence but just shopping prudently isn’t going to do it.
VM: In your book, you talk about creating a climate action trust. Can you expand upon that?
AS: If you, for example, look at what it’s going to take to fix the building you’re in right now, meaning to make it 50 percent more energy efficient, you’ll find that it’s going to be very expensive and you’ll have almost no return on investment—it might actually have a negative return on investment. You, as a business, are not going to do it unless there is essentially a trust fund to help buy up that return on investment. Government and non-profits are going to want to invest in carbon reductions. I think we should have a carbon investment trust that buys these emissions reductions by supporting efficiency that otherwise wouldn’t happen. So there is a way that this can happen—through a carbon taxation because if we double the price of energy, your return on investment just doubled and the revenue from that taxation can go into a trust fund. That’s what Jim Hansen at NASA suggested: that the carbon tax just gets rebated to individuals. But you can also create a fund and that’s what President Obama has talked about with selling carbon permits to the big emitters to create a renewable energy fund.
VM: What can you suggest to business and homeowners who want to build green?
AS: All you have to do is insulate the walls well, make the building tight, and have an efficient heating system. That’s it. You don’t have to be able to face it south if you can’t. You don’t have to have solar panels. With your existing building, it’s harder but there are resources out there. It starts with an energy audit. Typically you can get one through a utility and if not, more and more groups are forming to do this, but it’s different in each area.
VM: You touched on the fact that there are only 10 years to make profound changes. How can we speed up the widespread adoption of sustainable practices?
AS: Political activism. Why did we have 500,000 people protesting on the immigration legislation but we really haven’t had even a fraction of protest on climate, which is the issue of our time and maybe even of our species? We are going to have to get more visible in our agitation, and that means writing letters, talking to town councils, going to DC, and literally getting in the street. It’s not like this is going to happen without a revolution. And maybe people won’t get hurt in this one but they will get inconvenienced.
There is a great group called 350.org. They’re probably the number one group organizing this kind of actual protest. It’s a group started by Bill McKibben and the students at Middlebury College. 350 parts per million is the threshold [or the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2] that Jim Hansen at NASA said that beyond which, we’re going to have some very unpleasant consequences of climate change. Well we’re already at 380 and we’re headed toward 500. The idea is if there’s a way we can bring CO2 back to 350 parts per million, that would be the solution.
VM: Do you have hope for our world?
AS: I do have hope. I think that throughout history, humans have always been fundamentally looking for meaning in their lives and that’s why we created religions. If you look at the core principals of religions—I’m not talking about modern religion; I’m talking about the founding ideas—they were all about meaning, dignity, living a graceful life, tolerance and helping people. Nothing has been offered up to us with the ability to meet so broadly and so comprehensively, this human need for meaning in our lives as climate change. If you solve climate change, you solve poverty, air pollution, clean water availability, and many health issues. So my hope is that we don’t turn down a shot at this incredible opportunity to endow our lives with meaning, dignity and grace.
Getting Green Done is available through Public Affairs Books at www.publicaffairsbooks.com or at major bookstores. Auden Schendler will be speaking in San Francisco, CA on April 8 and 9. For more information, visit www.gettinggreendone.com.