Auden Schendler: podcast appearances and interviews

Auden Schendler is a Colorado-based climate activist and author who has contributed significantly to sustainability efforts in the business sector. He served as the senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company, where he managed sustainability programs for 26 years before stepping down in May 2025. During his tenure, he was involved in developing innovative utility-scale clean energy systems, including a microhydroelectric plant, a solar photovoltaic farm, and a coal mine methane-to-electricity project. Schendler has been an advocate for scale solutions to climate change through movement building, policy, and corporate influence. He has also served on the board of Protect Our Winters for a decade and contributed to enacting climate legislation such as rules on methane leakage, HFCs, and clean cars. In addition to his work in the private sector, Schendler has held public service roles including being a governor-appointed commissioner on Colorado's Air Quality Control Commission and serving on the Basalt, Colorado town council from 2016 to 2020. An accomplished author, his works include Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution and Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul. Schendler has written extensively on the failures of the modern environmental movement and its complicity with fossil fuel interests. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American's Earth 3.0. An outdoorsman who has climbed Denali, kayaked the Grand Canyon in winter, and ascended Mount Rainier's Liberty Ridge, Schendler resides in Basalt, Colorado with his family.