Auden Schendler with Paul Tolme
The Living Conscience of Climate Change — Holding Corporations Accountable for Global Decisions
Note: Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul
Third Place Books
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How might we meld our spirit and passion to fashion a better future with meaningful action on climate change?
We live in a world shaped by the impacts of global-scale industries and technologies, from upgraded office spaces to smarter vehicles to the world of information that lives in our pockets. With these advances have come many flashy campaigns about environmentalism– better recycling, carbon footprint tracking, greener energy and infrastructure, and more. Consumers are likely to trust that the entities in power are making the same types of changes they are as individuals. But how accurate is that assumption, and how effective are these practices at really tackling climate change in the first place? In his new book Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul, climate activist Auden Schendler aims to unravel the tangled reality of environmental movement, both current and future.
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Drawing from years of hands-on personal experience working as a corporate sustainability adviser, Schendler has compiled a collection of challenging truths about climate conscious practices. Terrible Beauty digs into the worldwide environmental ripple effects of American powerhouse companies like Apple and Microsoft, the conflicts of interest between the fossil fuel industry and corporate growth, and the solutions that have been touted for years for individuals and businesses alike with questionable results. While he argues that widespread greenwashing and protection of the status quo have played significant roles in the fight against climate change thus far, Schendler also maintains that awareness of our current practices and our collective obligation to preserve our planet could help us shift directions. Terrible Beauty doesn’t shy away from the hard lessons we have to learn, but uses them to craft a road map on how we can use innovation and our own humanity to tackle climate change at the corporate, community, and individual levels.
Auden Schendler is an author, speaker, and activist with a focus on scale solutions to climate change, including clean-energy development, policy, advocacy, and movement building. He is the Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company and has previously served on the board of Protect Our Winters and Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission. His previous works include his first book Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution, as well as features in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Grist, The Atlantic, and more.
Paul Tolmé is a journalist, brand strategist, and content creator specializing in projects related to the environment, snowsports, and outdoor adventure. His writing has appeared in publications including National Wildlife Federation, Newsweek, Salon, and Audubon.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle.