Megan Brown
Staff Writer
Auden Schendler wants to change modern environmentalism — a movement, he believes, that places blame on consumers while leaving corporations free from responsibilities. In a book that calls for companies to be held responsible and for lawmakers to pass legislation that will decrease carbon emissions, Schendler’s Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul entwines personal anecdotes with a call for a new perspective on environmentalism.
“The point is, it’s meant to be entertaining but also to deliver the story in a joyful way,” Schendler said.
Schendler will give a talk about his book at 12:30 p.m. today in Smith Wilkes Hall with a book signing to follow. His talk is a part of the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative slate of programming, with Week Five presented in collaboration with the nonprofit Protect Our Winters.
Schendler, who previously served on the board of Protect Our Winters for a decade, is a climate activist and avid outdoorsman — he’s climbed Denali, hiked North America’s highest peak and kayaked through the Grand Canyon during the winter. For 26 years, he ran sustainability programs at Aspen One.
For Chautauquans considering what questions to ask at his talk today, Schendler has just one request.
“I don’t want to be asked, and I will be very angry if I get asked, about recycling,” Schendler said. “Because that’s a distraction from these hard things we have to do.”
In the appendix of Terrible Beauty, Schendler explains how to sue ExxonMobil for private nuisance; the appendix is not “just about a lawsuit,” but about destroying the company’s social license.
“Without question, the fossil fuel industry, it ought to be the target of criticism and attacks on their social license, because what they’re doing is they’re essentially saying, ‘We know exactly what we’re doing with combustion of fossil fuels. There are $33 trillion worth of fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and we are going to monetize that at your expense, at your children’s expense,’ ” Schendler said.
The world Schendler entered into was one that declared that the free market would solve climate change. Schendler gave the example of how changing lightbulbs would help people save money on their energy bill, leading people to buy LED bulbs, but that hasn’t worked.
“Here’s a way to think about it,” Schendler said. “The sustainable business movement was as if in 1958, we had said, ‘Man, we got a civil rights problem in the United States. People of color are treated horribly. We’ve got to fix it. Here’s my solution — everyone just try to be nicer.”
While personal responsibility can be a factor in environmentalism, the focus has to be on corporations and legislation, Schendler said.
With the current political climate, Schendler acknowledges it can be overwhelming; however, it shouldn’t stop people from acting.
“Just before things change in history, people always are at the lowest point of despair,” he said.
Citing examples from Nazi-occupied France, to Eastern Europe in 1987, to John Lewis being beaten on “Bloody Sunday” by Alabama state troopers, Schendler sees these as moments when people would have felt like change wasn’t coming. But the Allies beat the Nazis, the Berlin Wall fell, and outrage over the images from the beatings roused support.
“You can’t see around the corner of history,” Schendler said. “Things get really bad, and then things change overnight.”
In his work, Schendler talks to many outdoor enthusiasts, and is one himself. Runners and skiers are all about “the stoke,” a feeling of exhilaration.
“I always ask those people, ‘On your deathbed, is that going to be enough?’ Are you going to be like, ‘Man, I had some good skiing’?” Schendler said. “… No. I wanted something more out of life. This opportunity to be involved in climate is a shot at meaning like humans have almost never had.”
