Like many Americans over the last year, I have been swept up in the masses of the underemployed. My field is, like its title, still developing. During economic hardships, programs in sustainability are cut due to budget shortfalls, and thus, no new hires. It was in this futile search for employment with some of Colorado’s most progressive ski resorts (Telluride, Aspen) that I came across Auden Schendler, Executive Director of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company. I was directed to his book “Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution” (2006) which I promptly read and would like to share some brief comments about here.

As this piece is written, the world is watching, waiting, and voicing their concerns over climate change while global leaders meet in Copenhagen at the 15th Conference of the Parties to negotiate a climate settlement. The task is daunting for governments to come to a conclusion and agreement over what is to be done and then to take the necessary steps toward that end. But, government cannot be the only stakeholders at the table. Indeed, as we very well may witness, governments may not have the necessary incentives to reach an adequate agreement, and therefore, require a new set of incentives to help them along. To what set of incentives am I referring to? Corporations. According to Schendler, business can and must play a vital role in encouraging governments to move forward on aggressive policy that allows for the implementation of technology (much of which already exists) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change.

Schendler writes: “One way to get a revolution is through business…Corporations have a crucial role to play: Of the one hundred largest economies in the world, fifty-one are corporations. More than individuals, businesses can influence policy because they carry huge weight with government. And businesses can get things done while waiting for policy change to take place” (20).

However, Schendler’s main idea here is based on an assumption that corporate sustainability (and advocacy for sustainability policy at the global level) springs from ethics rather than economics (120). This is an interesting concept and one that programs such as the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business program grapple with. Can corporations as we legally understand them have an ethical drive or are they purely driven by an underlying profit motive? Can corporations divorce from the ideas of profit and growth and refocus on ideas about increasing a community’s standard of living, improving the health of our climate, focusing on future generations? This concept comes in direct confrontation with what a corporation’s role actually is, and is a larger battle than merely encouraging corporate ethics. I would have liked to have seen a more robust argument on how to accomplish corporate ethics than merely the encouragement of such. However, Schendler’s assessment of business’ role and influence on the government is correct; individual action and advocacy will not likely be enough to incent governments to substantial change. We need business to lead the way.

Schendler’s book is largely written from personal experience during his time with the Aspen Skiing Company. While he generalizes conclusions from a limited amount of evidence, his experience nonetheless is a sufficient place to start. He travels in his narrative between prescribing possible solutions for businesses to “go green” and his experiences at Aspen with the sustainability program. Perhaps the most strikingly poignant piece of advice is his encouragement to learn from mistakes and recognize when something doesn’t work. He writes, “until we have conferences about the mistakes we made and the pitfalls we’ve encountered, not just about the brilliant successes we’ve had-our learning curve will remain flat” (11). Unfortunately, his faith in the ethics of corporations still has me waiting skeptically for a true example. And not just one, but the multitude of examples we will need to see in the business world that will influence governments to create sufficient policy. In the meantime, we wait and watch to see what our global leaders do come up with in Copenhagen.