Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul

We Coloradoans love our world: we relish the crisp morning light, the fish on the end of the line, the alpine summit in the fall. We have built lives around appreciating the profound beauty of the landscape, the rare gift of existence, and sharing it all with people we love in communities we cherish. So how did we end up with an approach to environmentalism that leaves all that threatened and in some cases destroyed? What happened to our aspirations for a better world, and how do we get them back? Auden uses stories about garden gnomes, wood chopping,  saxophonists, utility revolutions, mass movements, gonzo advertising, and history and philosophy to help us understand what went wrong, and how to move forward in ways both meaningful and fun.

Bio: Auden Schendler spent his career working in corporate sustainability, trying to use the power of business for good in society, first at Rocky Mountain Institute and then for 26 years at Aspen One. He focuses on large-scale, systemic solutions to climate change through advocacy, policy, and demonstration projects, including the first utility scale solar array in western Colorado, small hydroelectricity, model green buildings, and coal mine methane capture. Despite this seemingly professional resume, Auden most identifies as a dirtbag. A lifelong outdoorsman, has worked as an Outward Bound Instructor, Forest Service Goose Nest Island Builder in Alaska, High School teacher, trailer insulator, ambulance medic, and burger flipper. He is the author of two books: Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution, and Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul. Auden served as a town councilman in Basalt and an air quality control commissioner for the state of Colorado. He lives in Basalt.