Auden Schendler is Executive Director of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company. His writing has been published in Harvard Business Review, the L.A. Times, Rock and Ice, and Salon.com, among other places. His book Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution was published in 2009.

Excerpt:

“… Given the extreme challenges we face in implementing solutions—
whether trying to make mass transit work, fixing the problem of existing
buildings, building enough renewable energy to power our operations, or
driving federal action on climate policy—it’s worth asking the question: what
will motivate us to actually pull this off? How will we become, and then
remain, inspired for the long slog ahead? Because this battle will take not just
political will and corporate action; it will require unyielding commitment
and dedication on the part of humanity. We need to literally remake society.
We can intellectualize the need for action all we want, but in my experience,
in the end our motivation usually comes down to a cliché: our kids
and, for want of a better word, our dignity. Journalist Bill Moyers has said,
“What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient
Israelites called ‘hocma’—the science of the heart…the capacity to see…to
feel…and then to act…as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does.”
Moyers, who is an ordained Baptist minister, taps into something positively
religious about the possibilities in a grand movement to protect Earth.
Climate change offers us something immensely valuable and difficult to find
in the modern world: the opportunity to participate in a movement that,
in its vastness of scope, can fulfill the universal human need for a sense
of meaning in our lives. A climate solution—a world running efficiently

on abundant clean energy—by necessity goes a long way toward solving

many, if not most, other problems too: poverty, hunger, disease, water supply,
equity, solid waste, and on and on.
Climate change doesn’t have to scare us. It can inspire us; it is a singular
opportunity to remake society in the image of our greatest dreams.”