Degree Of Difficulty

By: Charles FishmanWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:16 AM

Global warming threatens the very viability of Aspen's famed ski resort. The real fix is about changing the way people think.

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Worldview Aspen Skiing resort’s first solar installation. Aspen is building two more that are larger.

Fan Gun Making snow seeded with flecks of dust costs more, but it saves water and energy.

Indeed, despite Aspen's growing awareness, the actual results can seem frustratingly incremental. Over the past two years, Schendler and O'Donnell concluded that best practice at Aspen isn't enough. They're increasingly worried about that single degree of temperature. "Am I happy with the pace with which the nation is addressing climate change?" O'Donnell asks. "No."

Schendler is blunter. "We are on the front lines of World War I--style trench warfare in the climate-change battle," he says. "And we are getting our asses kicked."

Schendler is trying to get Aspen Skiing to step out of the valley and into the larger global-warming fight. "If you were Aspen," he says, "and you really cared about the environment and climate change, how could you have the biggest impact? The answer is by using the name 'Aspen' to drive change."

Some of the efforts are modest. This year, Schendler wrote an article for Harvard Business Review ("Energy-Credit Buyers Beware"). Some are more ambitious. The company's Web site now includes not just information on the amount of snowfall (last 24 hours, last 48 hours) but direction to a separate Aspen Web site (www.savesnow.com) about environmental activism, with links such as "Take political action" and "Support advocacy groups."

This year, Aspen's marketing department is spending about half its national advertising budget on what amounts to a call to action. The ads show mountains in arresting postapocalyptic red, with a large melting snowflake, and text warning that snow itself could disappear altogether if urgent action isn't taken to avert global warming.

"The point is, individual action won't cut it," Schendler says. Climate change, he has decided, requires urgent governmental action--and that will happen only when people make noise. "There are 55 million skiers in this country. We want to inspire a grassroots movement on climate change. Those 55 million skiers are affluent, they vote, they can drive change."

It is, of course, a delicate problem. People on vacation don't want to be browbeaten into political activism. The risk is that they won't become activists, they'll just pick a different mountain.

The other risk, though, is that without action, there won't be any ski mountains. So Aspen has taken another unconventional tack. A dozen states and several environmental groups have demanded that the EPA regulate carbon dioxide--the key greenhouse gas--like any other pollutant. The agency has refused, and the states have gone to court to force the EPA into action. The case was argued before the Supreme Court in November.

Aspen filed an amicus curiae brief arguing on behalf of regulating carbon dioxide. To save money, Schendler himself helped draft the brief: a crisp 13 paragraphs and 23 footnotes. It focuses on the devastating impact even marginal global warming will have on the "alpine winter recreation business." In the Aspen area alone, it notes, total snowfall has declined by 16% since 1981.

What kind of reaction does Schendler hope for? Curiosity--and awareness. "Look at this! A rinky-dink ski resort in Aspen has filed this Supreme Court brief. What's that about? That's profound."

"We don't say that the people coming to Aspen are the solution," says Schendler. "If everyone went home, changed their lightbulbs, and bought a Prius, we wouldn't be close to fixing global warming. It would still not be enough.

"The only way out," he says, "is to use Aspen as a lever. I want Aspen to be a thought leader--not just to be doing it, but talking about how we do it."

Schendler is of the view that you never know what's going to get people's attention when it comes to dramatic social change. "How did you measure progress in the civil rights movement? How did you measure whether what you did mattered?"

It matters. Just as one degree matters.

Charles Fishman (cnfish@mindspring.com) is a Fast Company senior writer.