JUNE 2021

Is CSR missing the forest for the trees?

Auden Schendler on moving beyond sustainable operations to using business as a lever for policy change

Earlier this spring, a piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review caught our attention. The author, Auden Schendler, wrote that “the focus on sustainable practices instead of power-wielding has unwittingly empowered the fossil fuel industry’s capture of government policy and action, providing cover to allow ExxonMobil and others to maximize profit and global emissions of greenhouse gases, unmolested.” Several decades into the era of CSR, there’s a growing recognition that opt-in and incremental change just aren’t enough. We recently sat down with Auden, the VP of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company, to talk about where we go from here.

CHRISTIAN: Auden, thanks for joining me today. 

AUDEN: Hey, my pleasure. 

CHRISTIAN: Over the past 25 years, there’s been a shift in your understanding of corporate social responsibility. In the early days of CSR, it was seen as a solution to climate change, but now you believe that in some ways it has actually exacerbated the problem. In a recent article, you said:

Systemic change is the only path to climate stability. But what the corporate sustainability movement has truly succeeded at is ensuring that everyone works within a narrowly defined playing field that leaves the one thing we need to upend—the fossil fuel-based economy—intact and unthreatened. 

Can you walk us through the evolution in your approach to CSR?

AUDEN: So I came out of the nonprofit sector, and the thesis was that business was the only entity that was big enough, nimble enough and motivated enough–by profit–to meaningfully move the needle on the climate problem (or you can call climate sustainability, since you have to solve climate to be sustainable). And I took that ball and ran with it into the corporate sector where I am now at Aspen Skiing Company. 

The first thing I attempted was changing lightbulbs. It should have been straightforward, because lighting retrofits typically pay back anywhere from 50-100%. In some cases, the second you screw the bulb in, you’ve got your payback–the new LEDs are that efficient. We eventually got it done, but it was much, much, much more difficult than I had been taught. I’d been taught that smart business people would not turn down a sizable return on investment opportunity. And the reality of the world, as you know, is that there are other factors at play. You might make a lot of money changing a lightbulb, but even more by selling a bottle of wine. You may choose to spend your money on improving hotel rooms instead of garage lighting if you have a limited bucket of money. So what that led me to think was, I don’t think we’re going to get there! I don’t think business is going to be a key part of the climate solution, because it’s just not enough. 

Over time as I did this work, I said you know what, it’s not that it’s not enough. It’s that it’s actually distracting us from what really matters, which is wielding power and using business as a policy tool to drive large-scale change. And then I thought–and this is all 20 years of evolution condensed into a few minutes–well actually, it’s not just a distraction.... it’s a dodge. What I mean by that is that corporations don’t want, typically, to stick their necks out on policy and on controversial issues. They get attacked, and it distracts from their core mission, which is making stuff or selling a service or product. So they’re actually using things like carbon footprint reduction, lighting retrofits, green buildings, as a way to avoid the hard work. 

I thought well, that’s no good! And then I had the final shoe dropped in this intellectual conversation I was having with myself, and this actually happened while riding my bike. I was thinking about the proponents of this movement, which is: sustainable business is good for the environment, it’s good for all of us, let’s do it. I thought, what would the fossil fuel industry–the architects of the carbon economy, that are responsible for climate change and for the fact that we have a completely fossil fuel-powered economy, and for the fact that we have a fossil fuel-owned government–what would they want us to do? And the answer I came up with that almost made me fall off my bike was exactly what we’ve been doing. In other words, our work is complicit with the fossil fuel industry’s interests, because what they want us to do is take blame for the problem ourselves, to address it in small ball ways that don’t affect them. What they don’t want us to do is use our power and influence as a business with a huge and influential customer base. They don’t want us to start a social movement, to protest their activities, to engage their boards, or to engage politicians to change policy around the use of fossil fuels. 

So in some ways, I’ve argued, we’re complicit. 

CHRISTIAN: Within the CSR community, it feels like you’re ahead of the curve in reexamining the role of business. How would you say the response has been to what you just told me?

AUDEN: This is tough, because the reality is that 99% of corporate sustainability people are doing operational change. That’s what they trained for. That’s what they understand. There’s a very small group of people who understand and agree with what I’m talking about. The rest basically say yeah, we are getting serious–we’re using science-based carbon targets. Which is a term that basically means, we’re going to apply science to our business’s carbon footprint so that we make reductions that meet the scale of the global problem. It looks very serious; it’s defended by major NGOs and leaders in the field. And it’s… it’s bullshit. Basically it’s like asking if you’re in a shipwreck and you’re drowning, what portion of the ocean should you drink to save your friends around you. In other words, if what society has to do is cut emissions of carbon dioxide 100% by 2060, then you having a target of 30% or 40% or 70% doesn’t matter–what matters is whether you can get the rest of the world to change. That’s how you are part of the solution; it’s not just accepting blame and reducing X percent. 

CHRISTIAN: If the subset of business people who are concerned about climate change aren’t addressing it systemically, how does that pivot happen? 

AUDEN: I think we’re actually in the middle of that transition. And yesterday’s news [ed. note: we recorded this in May] is a good example. Exxon Mobil basically suffered a coup d'état on the board; a tiny hedge fund in California named Engine No. 1, which owned something like .6% of their shares, fronted two or three climate-friendly candidates for the board and won at least two of those seats. Now who came in and backed this? BlackRock, the world’s largest investment equity firm. BlackRock is run by Larry Fink, who has made profoundly ambitious and aggressive statements on the need for climate action, but never really done anything material to achieve that. Now he has. And simultaneously this coup at the board should tell Exxon hey, it’s not enough to run greenwashing ads on MSNBC about biofuels. It’s not enough to say you’re cutting your carbon footprint. It’s not enough to invest less than 1% of your total forward investment into renewable energy–while expanding fossil fuel development. Your organization is going to be changed for you. 

So the definition of corporate sustainability has got to change. It’s happening by force, and it’s very gratifying to see this. The same day, in the Netherlands, Shell lost a lawsuit and is being forced to do more to cut its carbon footprint. This is what I’m talking about: if you’re a business, you should be seeing things like this and saying, even if we don’t want to become more active and change, we’re going to be forced to. 

CHRISTIAN: That’s encouraging to hear. 

You mentioned Exxon’s ads on MSNBC, which opens up another theme you’ve written about recently, the disconnect between words and actions? Companies that give public lip service to a social cause, but in back rooms they’re funding conservative candidates or lobbying to maintain the status quo.

AUDEN: One of the stark challenges–and this has been brought up repeatedly by Sheldon Whitehouse, the senator from Rhode Island–is that you have leading corporations making a ton of noise on climate and taking pretty significant action around buying renewable power. You say ok, that’s great... is that going to solve climate? It’s just not enough. It’s important–but what would really matter Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, is if instead of spending money on renewable energy investments, you used your K Street lobbyists to prioritize climate action. And then if you were public about it in the news. If you dig in, Tim Cook has talked about climate. But it’s always in the context of what Apple has done in the context of its own operations. Now remember, that’s complicity with the fossil fuel industry. And what Whitehouse has pointed out, and now a new group called Climate Voice that’s run by Bill Weihl, who was the sustainability guy at both Google and Facebook, they’re saying: show us how much money you’re spending on climate lobbying. And the number’s about 4% of that. 

The way businesses operate is they’ll do an annual trip to DC where they publicly lobby on climate, but they’re typically lobbying for a bill–and if you’re doing that, the senator can say I don’t like that bill, but thanks for talking to me. But if you say, we’re not going to vote for you, and we’re going to make a public stink if you don’t get more progressive on climate… that’s a different argument. So these organizations have to actually use their lobbying power to push on this. And the reason they don’t is pretty simple. They need other stuff from Republicans. And if you ask for, say, trade policy support, you don’t want to then alienate them by opposing them on climate. 

There’s a great example of this playing out in real time in Colorado. We have a trade group called Colorado Ski Country USA. They’re our trade group; we pay them a lot of money. And we and the board have said climate should be a priority. Well, the governor of Colorado was very helpful during Covid. Now there’s a climate bill that’s profound, that’s supported by the environmental community, and he’s going to veto it. We’ve said to Colorado Ski Country trade group, you need to take a position on this. And they said, we’re not doing that, because he was so good to us on Covid. 

CHRISTIAN: How do you break through those gridlocks? If everyone wants access so they’re afraid to stick their necks out? Do you think that corporations are even willing, or structured in a way that allows them to start prioritizing climate at the cost to risk of other pieces of their business?

AUDEN: Yeah, I think this is playing out now as well. I used to argue that there was risk in taking a position on climate. And now, I think there’s risk in not having a position. A surrogate for this conversation is what happened in Georgia around the voter restriction law. Coke and Delta knew it was happening. They didn’t oppose it. And then–after it was passed!–they opposed it. That’s duplicity, right? They got what they wanted, which is more Republican governance, and then they came out opposed. Well, that’s a joke… people aren’t falling for that. So basically they’re learning that not having a progressive position is going to hurt them. And it’s going to hurt them way more than their senators or congresspeople can impact them–it’s their social license. It’s brand. So I think we’re getting past this. 

By the way, this isn’t that complicated, right? Our trade group could say, Governor Polis, you were awesome on Covid. Of course, a lot of what you did was just to keep the economy going, and we really appreciate it. Climate is going to put us out of business worse than Covid did, so we really have to support this bill. We know you don’t support it, but we’re going to take this, sorry. 

Right? This is just emotional intelligence. 

CHRISTIAN: So we’re entering a moment where support for progressive causes is a factor in a business’s social license. At the same time, you’re still seeing Tim Cook’s statements buried underneath other priorities. You’ve mentioned in the past how Salesforce has an arm that addresses progressive issues, but that it isn’t emphasized in their publicity. Is it because they’re still afraid to stick their necks out? Can you speak a little more to when that becomes front and center? 

AUDEN: Part of my thesis I guess, is that it doesn’t, because of the nature of these corporations. If you look at who’s leading and who has led, they’re only private corporations or corporations with visionary leadership that are unicorns. Salesforce is an example of that. They recognize the value of lobbying, and they’re changing as we speak in terms of prioritizing that over operational greening (though if you look at their sustainability report, it looks just like everyone else’s in terms of operational greening). You’ve got Patagonia, you’ve got Unilever… Patagonia is of course privately held, and there’s no one like Yvon Chouinard in the world. Paul Polman at Unilever got it, but he was like the only guy who got it. Corporations are very slow to change, so when you have this conversation, it almost becomes hey look, we’re going to take the willing–the businesses that are willing–but we need to call out those that are not. What I’ve said over the last decade is, if you’re calling yourself a green company and your CEO hasn’t made a very visible public statement on the need for strong government policy on climate, you’re just not a green corporation. 

CHRISTIAN: I’m curious how optimistic you are that policy would meaningfully shift the way that corporations are held accountable on climate. It feels like there’s still a belief that there’s going to be an opt-in movement where companies are going to voluntarily police their externalities, which we’ve seen time and time again doesn’t work. How do we get enough traction with policy?

AUDEN: Well... that’sa question about whether the American experiment succeeds. We’re in a democracy crisis right now, and it’s going to play out. If we continue to have a significant number of our elected representatives denying facts and basically retaining power by limiting voting, then we’re not going to succeed. 

Biden is showing what’s possible through the regulatory process, and some of the things he’s doing are significant and profound, like a pause on public lands drilling, which is 25% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Like ratcheting down methane restrictions. Like infrastructure support expanding renewable energy. Getting into office may require taking money out of politics, which is another conversation. But if you can get that little bit of edge, there’s all kinds of policy that even the business community would support that would accelerate this change. 

But this is about whether Americans can govern as a republic. When you dig in on climate, and you ask how we’re going to solve this, you realize... this is a democracy issue. And it’s a money in politics issue. Some philanthropists and leading thinkers on this, like George Soros, have said, I’m not going to work on climate anymore–I’m working on democracy. If you can move to a direct election for the presidency, if you deal with the Senate having disproportionate power and not representing people but representing states. If you deal with gerrymandering, if you halt voter suppression, if you take money out of politics, all–and this sounds pollyannaish–but our problems would be solved. Americans agree on climate overwhelmingly, they agree overwhelmingly on abortion actually. They agree on education and social justice. You’d solve these issues if you could govern. And a lot of this is just the structural problems in American democracy. QAnon apparently has more followers than some major religions, I saw in the news last night. So we’re in crazytown. 

CHRISTIAN: Then for those of us who care about climate, if democracy is fundamental to this, is now the time that we drop everything else to focus on politics? Obviously, you have a career and an expertise that runs parallel to democracy. But what are your thoughts for someone looking to get into a career around impact? 

AUDEN: Yeah, I mean as an individual I think you ask, where’s my power? You have to think beyond your individual actions or your business’s impact… it’s more how do I wield disproportionate power? Greta Thunberg is just a seventeen year old girl, but she’s wielding enormous power. Everyone is different. For me, it’s ok, how do we use this wealthy, press-worthy resort as a battleaxe on policy. How do we influence people who visit? How do we influence policymakers? 

It’s almost trite or cliche to cite Ben Franklin’s comment outside the constitutional convention, when a woman said, “What have you given us Mr. Franklin?” And he said, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” We’re failing widely to keep our republic. People hardly vote in the US, let alone participate in democracy. Every town has a town council. And it’s always like the worst of the worst who run for town council, the dregs who have too much time on their hands. I can say that–I was a town councilperson. But you can be on the planning and zoning commission and instead of voting down everything in your backyard that you don’t like, you can support initiatives like affordable housing. You can be part of a social movement by giving money and participating with groups like Protect Our Winters or 350.org. 

We got America delivered to us after WWII, this place with clean air and water and good laws and we’re like, this is how it must be. No, you have to work at it, people. You’ve got to work at democracy, you’ve got to pay taxes and show up, and it’s hard work, but it’s what you should be doing as American citizens. 

CHRISTIAN: Can we talk about some of the tactical work you’ve been involved in? Your organization has filed briefs in support of Supreme Court cases, and I want to go back to Massachusetts vs. EPA. If you could talk through why it was valuable to file that brief, what that Supreme Court case meant and then where you see similar opportunities?

AUDEN: Yeah. So to understand our approach to sustainability: we’re Aspen, so we’re a focal point of conspicuous consumption and power and wealth. One response to that would be, shut up you hypocrites, but we do two things to leverage that wealth in the climate fight. We use our wealth to model specific projects since we get so much press attention. So whether it’s a coal mine methane capture project or fully electric buildings and hotels, we’ll do these things and then we’ll push the word out on them. Today in the Washington Post, there’s a feature on the project we did capturing methane from a coal mine. That’s important because it’s not us doing it that matters, it’s whether other people replicate it. So that’s one approach. The other is to wield power. And the amicus brief we filed on behalf of MA vs EPA is an example of an attempt to wield power. 

Now, we’re also very realistic about what our impact is. I don’t think that the amicus brief mattered that much. While we were the only outdoor industry representative to file, I doubt it influenced the case. But the vision is right; that’s how we want to play ball. And the reason we intervened–this was in 2007–was because we were asked to by our friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council. MA vs EPA was the most important law in the history of climate. It basically says that carbon dioxide is a pollutant just like sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxide, traditional pollutants, and that it has to be regulated by the EPA. It’s binding, it holds true today. All American climate policy is going to be based on MA vs EPA. 

I think of it more as like this is how we ought to think, now can we apply this in different ways to other projects. 

CHRISTIAN: Interesting. You continued this process of supporting policy and decisions that are impactful; I want to jump over to Excel Energy submitting a proposal to close coal-burning power plants and replace them with wind, solar and natural gas. How were you involved in that process, and what’s been the outcome, has it met expectations?

AUDEN: Yeah. So I’ll give you some examples of how we try to wield power and how we try to act at scale. (And yes, that did happen, Excel now has a clean power plan; they’re closing coal plants, they’re doing renewables. We won that one.)

When we were looking at the fact that we use a lot of energy, what we saw businesses doing was buying renewable energy certificates, which are credits for energy generation elsewhere. And we did that, we bought some. Then I looked into it and I said, this is a joke, it’s like a scam… it’s not actually changing emissions in the world. Well ok, if we really cared about climate, what would we do? And the answer we came up with was that since our utility is  a conservative rural electric co-op, we’d change the board. So we dug in. And we spent 15 years community organizing, finding candidates and helping them run campaigns, ending up with staff changes and, thanks to a coalition that was involved, we now have Holy Cross Energy. The CEO is a climate scientist. They’ve divested from a coal plant. They have a target of 100% renewable energy. We don’t get to claim we’re 100% until 2030 when they get there, but when they do, it won’t be just us but the whole community–including our arch-rival, Vail–will be 100%. And there will be a model for how to do this transition. 

Another example, this is a long story, but the short version is that we boycotted Kleenex because of how Kimberly-Clark was practicing forestry. Because of who we are, that led to a conversation between our CEO and their CEO. Kimberly-Clark is bigger than many countries in the world and we’re just a rinky-dink ski resort, but we’re having conversations saying we’re not using Kleenex at Aspen. And Kimberly-Clark is saying, we want you to use Kleenex because of who visits. Alongside 700 other companies, that led to a change in how they practice forestry, which is a major climate issue obviously. 

So that’s power-wielding. Asymmetric warfare, that’s what the military would call it. At the moment, there’s a climate law in Colorado we’re supporting, and we’re in direct conversation with the governor and the governor’s office. Mike, our CEO, knows the governor. I know the staff. And we’re civil, but we’re like hey, this is leadership, we’ve got to do it. And then as another example, Biden’s interior department has put a pause on public lands drilling, because that whole process is screwed up, you know; fossil fuel companies will lease the land for pennies on the dollar. They make a ton of money on it and they contribute to climate change and don’t pay for that externality. So revisit that. At the worst, you should charge a ton more for the lease, and at best, you shouldn’t lease it at all because the scientists tell us we can’t extract more carbon and still meet Paris climate targets. So Biden files this pause. He gets opposed by the State of Wyoming and by energy trade groups. And we come in, working with Earth Justice and Public Justice, in support of Biden. So now he’s got a ski industry, which is relevant in Wyoming, right, they have Jackson, they have a big ski industry, saying you can’t do this, we support Biden. So we hope–and yeah we’re Aspen, so in Wyoming we may not have a lot of traction–but we hope that we’re a credible witness saying we support this, we’re business people, we’re using more and more clean energy, and we shouldn’t extract these fossil fuels. 

CHRISTIAN: Not to get sidetracked by operational greening, but can you talk about where you’ve run into roadblocks with on the ground implementation of sustainable practices, since you have so much experience in doing that alongside power wielding?

AUDEN: Well, the challenge in doing anything different is that the status quo is this freight train that’s very hard to stop or turn. It’s hard to deviate from the status quo in say buildings or hotels because yeah, it might use more energy, but it’s going to work. When you do things like I’ve done and you put an early generation waterless urinal in a luxury hotel and it smells, that’s bad! So the people who oppose change are just trying to do their jobs. That’s the primary problem. 

But we encounter this all the time. We’re trying to build a hotel in Mammoth, California and we’re trying to make it all electric. Electrification is a key climate solution, because if we heated that hotel with natural gas, it’s going to emit carbon dioxide for its whole lifetime. But if you heat it with electricity, it’s going to become greener every year until the grid is 100%; the grid in California is already 60% clean. When we pitched this, the engineers basically said you can’t do it, the technology doesn’t exist. It does exist–we just built a similar building here in Colorado. But the engineers’ job is to build the building in a way that they won’t get in trouble if it doesn’t work, so there’s no incentive. 

In the end, what works is changing building codes, you’ve got to change policy. We’ve built green buildings, but over time as communities changed their building codes it was actually hard to build even to code–because the code was that energy efficient. Snowmass Village is an example, we built a hotel there and we were barely able to make it as efficient as the code required. At the Limelight Snowmass, we ended up exceeding the code, but it’s a great code. So that’s the way things work. 

Without policy, in terms of implementation within a business, the key is that you’re not at war with your staff, you know? Initially, I might’ve gone in and said hey, we’re doing this, we’re being more efficient. The real way to approach these problems is to go to the facilities guy. In our case this was a Marine who on Parris Island during training was the best shot of 350 marines… so this is the real deal (laughs). I go in and talk to him. I say Peter, what have you always wanted to do that would help this company save money and energy. And he’d say oh, I’ve always wanted to retrofit the boiler in this hotel, but we’ve never had enough money. Okay, let me help you with that. So it requires a humility and a lack of kind of righteousness. And a respect for people’s places in the world, in the sense that Peter may have college expenses for his kids. Yeah he has ideological differences, he’s got health care challenges, he hasn’t paid off his house. You have to assume people are good people, which they mostly are (though some people in Exxon Mobil are not, for example). You have to come to them as a human being and say, I want to work together. And that doesn’t always happen; it’s often command and control, or the environmental community has a level of righteousness that turns people off. 

CHRISTIAN: You’re trying to balance the visionary leadership that is needed to move us forward, and doing it in a way that’s not arrogant and brings people along, is what you’re saying.

AUDEN: Getting back to Ben Franklin–he had this list of virtues, thirteen of them. He tried to meet one virtue every week, and then he’d switch to the next. And he was like, the hardest one I can’t get is humility. You know, it’s very difficult, I have not been a model of humility in my life. But you have to aspire to it. An example of what we’ve learned here is if we achieve something great like we just did with an all-electric building, you dish off the credit as much as you can. Literally instead of me talking about it, we’ll have this person, or the CFO will do the interview, and you just dish it, dish it, dish it. And it only elevates you right? 

CHRISTIAN: Within an organization, in many ways you’re in a unique position in terms of the type of company you work for, the flexibility and support that you’re getting. You’ve written about how people who get brought into sustainability positions are often sidelined. 

AUDEN: I think that’s the status quo right now. If you’re a sustainability person, you’re not involved in company policymaking, you don’t talk to the CEO. And that has to change. Again, the companies that are leading are the ones where the CEO is the sustainability officer basically... Marc Benioff, or Larry Fink. We have this unique situation where I’ve been privileged to be at the table; I’m part of a 12-person senior management team. My perspective gets weighed even if we can’t follow it. In some cases, I am able to draw the line; I’ll say we just can’t do this. I think even within our progressive company, there are forces of conventionality that are actually pushing us back towards a kind of operational greening approach that is copacetic and that everyone can love–because the reality is that the work that I do is highly controversial, you make mistakes, and it sometimes puts the company in an awkward position. In the end, that’s very hard within a business community. 

In 2007, I think, I was the subject of a Businessweek cover story that was kind of blowing the whistle on the corporate sustainability movement. I got in severe trouble for that. I was talking to a friend of mine who used to be the sustainability director at Patagonia, and he said yeah Auden, corporations want things to be happy, smiley face all the time, and you didn’t do that. 

I think there is a cracking in the system where a company like Patagonia deserves a lot of credit for saying we don’t give care, we’re going to do this. So they have tags on their clothing that say Vote the Assholes Out. And what’s interesting is that that was done by staff; it wasn’t approved by the CEO. They have a culture that allows that to happen. Well, they’re doing great, and they’re highly respected. 

CHRISTIAN: Yeah! Ok this is jumping around, but I want to circle back to something we were talking about earlier, economic arguments for climate solutions. With some of the low-hanging fruit –lightbulbs, low-flow taps–there’s a return on investment that can be compelling. In corporations and even at a policy level, you hear about how great the ROI is on certain solutions, as a strategy to get people on board (because, like you said earlier, even those solutions can be difficult to implement). The risk is that we set the precedent of making economic arguments. Many other needed solutions, unless you’re operating on a long-term time horizon with a very robust definition for economic health, are at odds with profit. This seems to be something that gets swept under the rug in the impact investing world and the CSR world. How do you think about that challenge?

AUDEN: You know, it’s a huge problem. If you look at the Obama administration’s first four years talking about climate, they focused on national security and energy independence–and it got no traction at all. Then they started framing climate as a moral issue. So the short answer to your question is that the way to get things done in society is by using morality. You can look at the abortion issue and see the power of anti-abortion messaging, the kind of intensity that brings to the conversation. 

I think the economic argument is dangerous because it only gets you so far, like your retrofits will only get you 30% of your carbon reduction. At the same time, we have an economic system that simply doesn’t function as it ought to, in the sense that some things are free and some things are not free and there’s no logic behind it. So it’s free to pollute carbon dioxide, but you have to pay to throw your garbage out. A philosopher at the University of Tennessee, I think, did a study saying your average American’s emissions are going to be responsible for 1.5 deaths or something like that over your lifetime. Well, we should be ruthless and monetize that right? If there’s a cost to carbon dioxide emissions, let’s put that in the system to help it fix itself. It’s not the only answer, there has to be a moral piece, but fixing the economics is a piece of it. 

I think Trump is an example of the power of a moral argument, right? People felt he was making a religious and moral case. And that’s the role of a president, is kind of to bring values into the policy conversation. You can criticize Biden for his past legislation and for not doing enough, but he’s been really good about addressing the human component of why we’re making certain policies. Remember, this is the guy who blurted out that gay marriage was fine before Obama did, and he got in trouble.  

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. On the topic of capitalism, something that has come under fire by the progressive left… I’ve heard you talk about moving away from a fossil fuel-based economy, but not necessarily capitalism. Do you see mechanisms for the type of functional capitalism that you mentioned? It just feels like we’re so far away from a true free market system, and we’re so far away from being able to capture the externalities that are necessary to actually have a functional capitalism. 

AUDEN: I mean, I guess my take is I agree with those people right? Generally speaking–Naomi Klein and others who are arguing that capitalism is fundamentally broken… I agree. I’m not sure we can get rid of capitalism; I think we’re stuck with that model. But the role of government and regulation was to fix market failures in capitalism. So there’s a role for regulation, and there’s a role for economic signals like a carbon tax. If we had a $200/ton carbon tax, suddenly we’d be closer to reducing emissions. I think you have to achieve a level of capitalism that looks more like what real capitalism would be and that may look more socialistic. Norway’s a capitalist society. The US is capitalist, but we have smart, socialistic programs like Medicare, Social Security. So I think you have to work within the system. And I’m actually a guy who consistently argues don’t work within the system! Like I want us to drop out of our trade group that’s not doing anything on climate, but I’m losing that fight. But I think it’s hard to drop out of capitalism... realistically, I don’t see how we do that in the next 50 years.

Imagine two semi-plausible things and one implausible. What if we eliminated subsidies for fossil fuels? It’s in the hundreds of billions of dollars–

CHRISTIAN: –wait was that the plausible or implausible? (Laughs)

AUDEN: That seems plausible... the right gets that, they don’t like subsidies. And then a carbon tax, semi-plausible. Think about if you had an escalating carbon tax that didn’t eliminate regulation, those two things would contribute to a different society. Then what if you had publicly funded elections? Now that’s implausible, I think. But what if you did? You’re still in a capitalist system, but we’d actually be functional. 

CHRISTIAN: Yep. As we look at these solutions, what’s the role of academia in this process? You’ve talked about it as the closest thing to an unbiased source in our society. How do you think about engaging with academia as a driver of new ideas? 

AUDEN: What’s been fun about my career is that I’ve had a foot in academia. Many of my colleagues I will co-author academic papers with are professors at business schools, and I’m regularly at business schools talking with students. All of these sustainable business people–the ones in the back rooms doing carbon accounting and not driving change–they came from somewhere. And they were taught at business schools. So there’s an opportunity to change what they’re taught. Now here’s a really gratifying story... I got a text the other day from a student at a business school, a screengrab of what the professors had up. It was the SSIR article I wrote about how your role is not to reduce an organization’s impact, but to use the organization as a tool for movement building and power-wielding. And the professor had included a caption below the article: “Should we change how we’re teaching sustainable business?” If business schools start changing how they teach–because right now they’re teaching to the conventional logic–suddenly we have weaponized graduates who aren’t going to accept the carbon accounting jobs. Maybe they’ll be unemployed, but then they’ll be part of the movement. 

CHRISTIAN: I had a conversation with Rick Ridgeway over at Patagonia on this topic of where the power of youth is. And he similarly felt like talent is not necessarily being fully weaponized, as you would say, or being primed to drive the change that it could.  That there’s power in a generation of desirable future employees drawing the line by saying I’m not going to work for you, here’s what you need to do before I would consider working for you.

AUDEN: Yeah, a lot of what I see is this inclination to worry about process–getting your annual review done, and your reporting–over mission. You’re always being pulled back into management, strategic planning and whatever. And talent does, I think, get stifled. So it’s the organizations that allow, and Patagonia’s a great example, they allow people to flourish. I think we do as well, but then the bigger you get and the more publicly owned you get, the harder it is. 

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. Well... any last thoughts? 

AUDEN: Hmm, no. I would say that this conversation ought to be what’s going on in the heads of sustainable business practitioners on a daily basis, and if you disagree, then ask, if I really cared about climate change and my role in this organization, what would I be doing?

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.