Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution

With everyone from Oprah to Vanity Fair advocating that we "go green," it looks like green has become the new black. But although environmentalism and "green" issues have hit the mainstream, actually implementing the practices that will save the planet is brutal work, more akin to trench warfare than to surgery.

Gurus say that sustainability is quick, easy and profitable. But if that were true, wouldn't it have happened already? In reality, if we're going to achieve sustainability and solve the climate crisis, we don't need visionaries, we need grunts. And despite the explosion of media coverage and public interest in sustainability in the past year, it's not clear that the public - or the business community - really understands what the solutions look like on the ground.

GETTING GREEN DONE is a witty, contrarian look at the sustainability movement. Auden Schendler, a sustainable business foot soldier with over a decade's worth of experience, gives us a peek under the hood of the green movement - of what it means, in the trenches, to actually implement solutions to climate change. What really happens when you try to replace all the light bulbs in a five star hotel? What does the crusty mechanic say when you ask him to put French-fry oil in his $250,000 tractor? What goes right? What goes wrong? What are the barriers to change, and the benefits of success? How do you actually make sustainability happen?

It's not sexy work, but it's our future.

About Auden Schendler
Auden Schendler is executive director of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company. He worked previously in corporate sustainability at Rocky Mountain Institute. Schendler has been a trailer insulator, burger flipper, ambulance medic, Outward Bound instructor, high school math and English teacher, freelance writer, and Forest Service goose-nest-island builder. An avid outdoorsman, Schendler has climbed Denali, North America's highest peak, and kayaked the Grand Canyon in the winter. His writing has been published in Harvard Business Review, the Los Angeles Times, Rock and Ice, and Salon.com, among other places. In 2006, Schendler was named a global warming innovator by Time magazine. He lives in Basalt, Colorado with his wife, Ellen, and their children, Willa and Elias.

The Greater Seattle Chamber thanks Kim Ricketts of Kim Ricketts Book Events for providing this special opportunity.

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