Zele Community Table
February 20, 2007
Auden Schendler
Aspen Skiing Company
Executive Director of Environmental Responsibility
Auden Schendler and Michael Conniff with Linda Guido.
Michael Conniff: You have an interesting title at Aspen Skiing Co., so let’s start with that.
Auden Schendler: It just changed. I’m now “executive director of community and environmental responsibility.” The idea is that in most corporations there’s a department called “Corporate Social Responsibility.” And we figure in reality caring about the environment is no different than caring about how your kids grow up. It’s the same issue of responsibility and respect. And we’re now taking over Skico’s philanthropy. When Skico comps lift tickets, my department is in charge of that. We also work with the Crown Family Fund.
MC: How long have you been at Skico?
AS: Seven years. This just happened. It’s a new change.
MC: How did it come about?
AS: As you do more environmental stuff, people kept asking for advice. We started looking at trans-fat in the restaurants. Matt Hamilton in my department brought it up. It’s not my job, and it’s sort of annoying to be asked about that. At the same time it’s an issue of responsibility. The FDA and health agencies say no percentage of trans-fat is okay.
MC: Were you able to get rid of it?
AS: We’re really close to eliminating it. The other part of the story is the corporate contributions director left. We have a guy in my department, Matt Hamilton, and he was the perfect guy to take it over. Another example would be the entrance to Aspen. It’s clearly an environmental issue but also community, economic, political. My department will be a political liaison.
MC: Are you happy with the change?
AS: I love it. It’s the most important thing. That’s how we’re going to drive change.
MC: What’s going to change?
AS: We’ll get more active and that’s unprecedented.
MC: Like the letter Skico wrote about the entrance to Aspen, the one signed by nine people?
AS: Skico has a position on Burlingame, on the entrance to Aspen, but we were not as vociferous about it—not in a bludgeoning way, not in a company town way. In the same way as the letter indicated, we’ll be more attentive, with more engagement.
MC: How did the change come about?
AS: [New Skico CEO] Mike Kaplan felt that that this was a broader issue. [Former Skico CEO] Pat [O’Donnell] had brought it up. And it keeps me engaged. I’m interested in more than just the environmental realm.
MC: I know you’ve been active where you live.
AS: In Basalt. I think it’s crucial to differentiate that from Skico. That’s me acting as a public citizen. In Basalt and other places, you can’t differentiate urban planning from the environment issue.
MC: How will your job at Skico change?
AS: Environment is still a huge focus, but Matt Hamilton is the guy doing that day-to-day work. And we’ll continue that. We’ve got a list of new programs as we speak. The vehicle fleet at Skico, for example. CRMS [Colorado Rocky Mountain School] worked on all our cars. It was a brutal project.
MC: What kind of mileage do they get?
AS: Fourteen miles per gallon. How can we improve that? We can’t find a better truck, but we can see if a mountain manager really needs a truck—or could he use a Subaru. Some say they’d love a Subaru. Even moving from a truck to an SUV can be a positive step.
MC: How many vehicles in your fleet?
AS: It’s in the hundreds.
MC: What about the entrance to Aspen? Skico obviously causes a lot of the traffic by drawing tourists to town.
AS: We’re a large part of the cause of the traffic. Without the ski resort there would not only be no traffic but also no tax base. But it’s not an issue we can solve alone. We need to work with the public.
MC: What made Skico get more active about traffic this year?
AS: It reached the critical mass. We started getting letters from guests. I had a meeting in Aspen and I couldn’t get there.
MC: Do you back a solution?
AS: The modified direct preferred alternative. The first step is to fix Buttermilk to the roundabout and include a bus lane on the new bridge. It’s just two lanes but it won’t be falling down. We want to do the upgrades now.
MC: But right now the there are only two lanes, right?
AS: You can put rail on that bridge but not a bus. A public vote can fix that. That’s going to prove out to be very effective. The next step is to work with people, to get consensus to fix it all the way.
MC: What’s the direct preferred alternative?
AS: It goes under the Marolt open space. I think it’s a good solution.
MC: Can you imagine how people are going to react if they are stuck underground on the way into Aspen?
AS: It’s a very short stretch under the ground. Environmentally it’s good. You get that continuity with that system. You solve the most pressing issue.
MC: Is rail dead?
AS: There’s no federal funding for rail. So you kiss rail goodbye. The money that exists is for bus rapid transit—a bus that wants to be a train. It’s nice. It’s nicer than your average bus.
MC: Can the rail issue be re-visited?
AS: That’s the thing. Some people say re-open the public process. That’s what happened for years. To go back to the drawing board is to become insane. It would take two years and cost $2 million. You would need an additional environment statement. We have a crisis now.
MC: How long have you been here?
AS: I’ve been in the valley fifteen years. How it came to this is it’s a perfect problem. The people who vote in Aspen aren’t subject to the worst part of the problem. The entrance keeps people out.
MC: And that’s a good thing from their perspective.
AS: Not if you’re a business. But many of those people don’t live in Aspen. The people who live here might need to vote against their perceived self-interest.
MC: What about the other parts of your new job.
AS: We’ve taken over corporate philanthropy.
MC: How much does Skico spend on philanthropy?
AS: On the order of half-a-million. It’s local, on things that build social infrastructure, education, and health. The environmental philanthropy has been taken by the [Skico employee] foundation.
MC: How will things be different?
AS: We might potentially become more focused in saying broadly how can our giving make this a better community—in education or child care, for example.
AS: What’s the hardest part for Skico?
AS: I think often people don’t recognize Skico as a business and think that there are unlimited resources. In reality, we make our money by selling lift tickets. Only in the last few years have we done any real estate. We’re putting in $50 million in improvements on Snowmass mountain. People think we have deep pockets and we adamantly don’t. Maybe we’re held to a higher standard because we talk about these things. Others aren’t held to any standard because they don’t discuss this issue. It’s the issue of greenwashing. They know you’re bad and you don’t get attacked. You’re always called a hypocrite and you get attacked. So we’re open to criticism.
MC: What’s the higher standard?
AS: The standard is that we’re greedy and the Crowns are greedy. In reality, almost nothing about it has been about greed. In the last ten years, there’s been enormous investment in the community by the Crowns. Highlands is a good example. The new lifts there cost $2 million. The other thing is people say Skico is just a bunch of greedy people. Look at the top hundred people at Skico—they’re civic-minded, non-greedy people. Pick the CEO. He’s not greedy, he has a sense of community. There are people like Ron Chauner at Highlands. He’s the salt of the earth. Take the guys on the lifts at Snowmass, Jesse Caparella—his mission in life is to do good.
MC: What about the pollution from the private jets?
AS: You can work with the airport and
the town and say how do we address this? Maybe there’s a way to create a tax on carbon. You can say Aspen as a whole is an enormously wasteful community and skiing is a hedonistic wasteful activity so let’s stop. It’s a nihilistic and reductionist argument. Take it to its endpoint. American society is really wasteful: five percent of the world’s population is using 25 percent of the energy. Europe is wasteful, China compared to Europe is wasteful. How do you draw a line? In my life, I kayak. Peter Singer, the Australian philosopher, says that for the cost of my kayak I could save 400 people from dying in Africa. If you’re in the street and you’re wearing a nice suit and you see a kid drowning in a muddy puddle, you’d go in a save the kid. It would cost you about 50 bucks to fix the shoes, and get your suit dry-cleaned. How is it any different?
MC: But do you really know if you’ve made a difference in situations like that?
AS: In some cases, you do know. Some organizations like “Nothing But Nets” say if you contribute 25 bucks two mosquito nets are provided. That saves lives that would be lost to malaria. From the ski angle, it’s an argument that has no end point. Tying back to my department, the role is to think about those things. You’ll commit suicide but you do the best you can.
MC: How about the wind credits. Did you sell any this year?
AS: Wind credits—about 250 people buy these. The big one is to offset the season pass.
MC: Are offsets and mitigation effective?
AS: I called the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. I asked Bonneville: “Is this legitimate?” They made a very convincing argument.
MC: How did you get here?
AS: In 1992, I came for a job, an environmental consulting job at a spinoff of Rocky Mountain Institute. Then IRT Environment went out of business, so I went to work flipping burgers at the Charburger in Basalt, where the Taqueria is now. I did that for six months. That was a stopgap. I’m pleased to have done that but I predict I will do it again. Everyone has done what they have to do to survive. The proprietor said I didn’t hire you because you have a college degree.
MC: What did you study in college?
AS: Biology and environmental studies at Bowdoin College. But it didn’t mean anything so you had to do a real major. So I did microbiology and genetics. It helps you understand how systems work.
MC: Where are you from?
AS: I went to school in Maine and went to school in New Jersey. But I had family in North Dakota and Montana.
MC: How did you end up in Colorado?
AS: I went to Telluride to a wedding and just stayed there. I wanted to come to Colorado. I had worked here as an intern at High Country News.
MC: So you were a journalist!
AS: I’ve written consistently for my whole life. I also worked at an auction company in Steamboat, old cowboy stuff. That was my job. But I always thought of myself as a Westerner. I would visit my grandparents in North Dakota as a kid, and I considered myself a Westerner at age 5. I remember saying to my Mom: “Can I tell people I’m from North Dakota?” I always felt I was a Westerner. I went to Stuyvesant in New York City but I was from right here.
Linda Guido: You live out here now?
MC: Yes we do. And you?
LG: I sell residential real estate in Manhattan. I saw a listing here in Aspen for four bedrooms and 2,000 a square foot. It’s more expensive than Manhattan.
AS: We hope they don’t ruin it here.
MC: You’re an environmental specialist. Are you worried?
AS: The beauty’s not threatened but the community’s threatened. Dan Richardson resigned [from the City of Aspen Canary Initiative] and you want to replace him. I could barely afford my house in Basalt and now it’s doubled in price. I have a friend—he’s perfect for the job but he couldn’t afford to live here. That’s the big threat, the loss of community. Affordable housing is not my realm. That’s Dave Bellack, Jim Lang, those guys are the point of the spear in affordable housing at Skico and they’re not turning down any opportunity.
MC: Skico just bought a motel in Carbondale.
AS: We bought a hotel. You’ll see more and more of that happening.
MC: Will you endorse anyone for Mayor?
AS: It’s a good bet that we will.
LG: My mother has a timeshare here. I come here for a little bit because I love it so much. I see these high-end shops go up—it’s an expensive place. You don’t want to ruin the quaintness. But it can just get over the top and push out the regulars (sic). I wouldn’t want to see it get any more escalated.
AS: It’s changed but a lot of these things are intractable problems. Quaintness can be a problem. There were restrictions on what you could build. The price of housing went through the roof. William Kuntsler wrote a book called “The Geography of Nowhere.” He’s a radical. He came to Aspen once and he said: “Put another story on every building in town.” People were furious for two weeks. And the funny thing is, I’d do that. I totally support that kind of in-fill. It will block a view but there’s no community there to see the view.
MC: That’s not going to happen.
AS: It would take an incredible act of will. On a less extreme scale, they’re talking about bringing a big box store to Carbondale. I say bring it in and put housing on the second story. People need to think of housing before they think of anything. We’re looking everywhere to do it. Doing it in Snowmass as mitigation. Thunder River Lodge in Carbondale. We’re frantically looking to build and to buy.
MC: It must be gratifying to you personally to see the way people have changed in the way they think about climate change.
AS: It’s radically changed. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a press story on climate change. The Economist, Elle, Vogue, Vanity Fair have all had lead stories on it.
MC: Why did it happen now?
AS: It happened because the elephant was in the room for fifteen or twenty years. The scientific consensus is so great there was no question any more. Even the Exxon CEO is saying we have a problem. I’m lucky to be in this field at this time. It didn’t seem like the future was exploding before. Environmentalism was perceived as a luxury. Now it’s not perceived as a luxury. There’s no question about it. BusinessWeek had a lead article. It’s understood now. Look at Wal-Mart, GE, Toyota, they’re pure business people doing it. Profit monsters. Compare them to some people who aren’t doing it, like GM and Ford.
MC: What’s the future look like to you?
AS: In fifty years, if nothing happens, we look like Colorado Springs.
MC: You mean Christian?
AS: That too. Skiing is the wrong question: because so many different things will be happening, skiing will be the least of our problems compared to coastal inundation. More and more people will find that the effects are more immediate than we had recognized. The North Pole, if it melts, it’s gone in 15 years, it’s been around 3 million years. Half of all CO2 has been emitted since 1980. That’s amazingly effective in melting that icecap. We need to change the perception of a future problem to this is a now problem.
MC: Like Katrina?
AS: Get used to it. In Alaska, Senator Ted Stevens is talking about automobile efficiency. The permafrost is melting. In Shismariff, Alaska, they’re re-locating. Just Google “permafrost Alaska.” The other thing is these positive feedback loops will kick in. When you start warming the tundra, these bogs start releasing methane, and that’s 20 times more lethal as a greenhouse gas. It’s the same principle as your driveway. Shovel a square of snow, the whole thing will melt out.
MC: I didn’t know that. We didn’t have driveways in New York City.
AS: It’s a positive feedback loop. That’s what happening in Alaska.
MC: How do you personally feel about the future?
AS: I’m 36. I have kids. I’m pessimis
tic but here’s the analogy. Michael, you’re going into the ring with Muhammad Ali in his prime. I have a gun to your head and you have to do it. You bob and weave and you try to kick his ass. We have no choice but to engage this battle frontally and maybe even enjoy it. It used to be swarming with skeptics. They’re either gone or incredibly easy to dispatch. It’s very hard to forward a skeptic’s argument when there’s consensus on this. And the guys still defending it said smoking didn’t cause cancer.