The conference in Copenhagen ended 2009 with climate change talks. As 2010 got off to its frigid start, I found this article, on Boing Boing, about Lisa Katayama sitting down with Auden Schendler, the Sustainability Director of the Aspen Skiing Company, to talk posh ski resorts in Aspen and climate change.
In their conversation and his book, Schendler addresses the contradictions of his job title, see in 2008 the Little Nell generated nearly 500 times the amount of CO2 emissions as the average household (4,245 tons of CO2 emissions compared to the 17,000 lbs. per household).
Schendler says in his book, Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution, that ski resorts are both villain and victim of the climate change problem.
"At our ski resorts, we will have to make more and more snow to stay in business in a warming climate, which costs us more and more money and uses more and more energy, which in turn warms the climate, requiring us to make more snow," Schendler says in his book.
During his interview with Katayama, he addresses the question that’s often posed to him, “Why don't you shut down the resort?” To which he says it’s hard to draw a line between necessary and excessive.
“Can you stay in a hotel? Not a five star hotel. Can you stay in a motel 6? Pretty lavish compared to say, Bangladesh,” Schendler said. “It becomes impossible to say what's okay that's not.”
He thinks the best approach to climate change is to force people to consider how much energy they’re using, with a carbon tax.
“Right now it costs $2000 a year to heat that pool. Maybe if it cost $20,000, things would start to change,” he said.
Using the resort as a testing ground, he feels we can see what environmental changes work, like $2 per guest charge to preserve open space.
Some of the resort's other changes include solar panels on the roofs, maps on the lifts (to reduce littering), LED lights, and meeting The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. LEED is a system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to provide standards for green construction.
Some other interesting quotes from Schendler (all from the Katayama interview):
“I always get in the same arguments with the hard core enviro community. They want me to do rinky dink stuff like bamboo floors and recycling, and I tell them it doesn't matter, that their personal actions don't matter because the problem's too big. That pisses people off — they get mad at me and say every little bit helps. But every little bit doesn't help because the problem's too big. If everyone who was so inclined did every little thing from the Prius to the bulb, we still wouldn't solve this problem. It's gotta be a global mandate, not a voluntary thing. My day is full of people getting furious at me. Last week I had to send the FBI some death threats I was getting about calling the governor of Utah willfully ignorant on climate. This is war. This is a combat situation. and it's gonna hurt people the way wars hurt people. I like to say, we're gonna have to break things and hurt people to make this happen. Just being straightforward and truthful about these things instead of glossing and deluding people is incredibly valuable.”
“Skiing is absurd on its face. But we have to assume that the business itself is acceptable because presumably, no matter how radical we are as environmentalists, the community needs a base of business. There's value to an economy and people having meaningful jobs that pay well. Otherwise to solve climate you'd have to shut the world down and go back to medieval times.”
“What if I said, you know what, I can't justify being here at this five star hotel. I'm gonna go to the peace corps and work on putting photovoltaic installations in Samoa. What have I done? I've essentially made myself powerless.”
“Jeffrey Sachs said, if the top 5% of the wealthiest people in the world gave 4% of their income every year, you'd end global poverty. Those people are right here! They're in this hotel! I'm exactly where I need to be.”
A story from The Goat on this interview.
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