Shortly after I finished the book in the fall of 2008, there was a political climate revolution in the United States that made
even jaded environmental foot soldiers like me optimistic. First, Barack Obama got elected, an eye-watering miracle in
itself. Next, he appointed an astonishingly well-qualified dream team to all the most critical climate policy positions.
Carol Browner, who understands climate change, its consequences, and policy solutions as well as anyone on the
planet, took the new position of White House climate czar. Nobel laureate Stephen Chu, who has been outspoken on
the need for drastic action to address greenhouse gas emissions, became head of the Department of Energy. Lisa Jackson
took over at the Environmental Protection Agency and immediately made it clear that her agency would regulate
CO2 as a pollutant. Colorado senator Ken Salazar, as clear a thinker on the value of the new energy economy as I’ve ever
heard speak, took over at Interior. And modern-day climate warriors like Cathy Zoi and Nancy Sutley accepted senior
positions as well. Meanwhile, what many are now calling “the Great Recession” of 2007–2009 actually reduced CO2
emissions in the United States, and realities like peak oil suggest that we may necessarily see some level of decline in
CO2 emissions, whether we work to make it happen or not. This is hugely encouraging news. It even looks like we
may enact the most important single policy I call for in this book, the sine qua non of a climate change solution—
climate legislation that puts a price on carbon dioxide emissions— within a year.
And yet . . . after climate legislation passes, I worry that there’s going to be an awful Monday morning when we wake
up after a weekend of partying and realize that, yes, policy is in place, and yes, energy costs more—its high price has sent
a signal to the markets to get more efficient—and yes, we are on our way. But then what? On that day, as we swill our coffee, we’re going to need to reach for the battered glove on the cover of this book. Because in the end, solving climate change is going to be about honest implementation of real solutions and shared stories of all the pain and suffering and
glory that entails. Only a brutal openness about how to do this work will enable us to move forward rapidly by learning
from each other. That is what this book is about. One of the greatest challenges we run into in the trenches,
as you’ll learn here, is that when it comes to confronting the climate crisis, social, cultural, and human barriers to change
abound. Even the story behind this book itself is an illustration of the challenges of driving big-scale change.
This book, in part, was an outgrowth of a front-page story about my work in Businessweek. The title was “Little
Green Lies,” and the point of the story was, in theory, that the business community hasn’t been entirely forthcoming
about the insane difficulty of implementing sustainability. Businesses that are trying really, really hard, like Wal-Mart or
Aspen Skiing Company, where I work, aren’t succeeding at the only thing that matters: reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Instead, most tout minor green initiatives that make them look good but don’t really matter in the long term.
When I got to work the Monday after the article came out, my office was empty: no furniture, no wall hangings,
nothing. It was as if I’d been fired. It turned out that clearing my office was a joke on the part of our CFO.
There were other jokes, too. Our vice president of human resources had called me the Friday the article came out and said, “Please see me at the office on Monday morning as soon as you get in.” I called his home, called his cell, and e-mailed
him, in something of a panic. “If this is about the article,” I thought, “I’m screwed. But if it’s about something else I’m
not even aware of, I’m probably in even bigger trouble. And I really don’t want to spend the weekend thinking about this.”
He finally called me that night, laughing. It was all pretty funny, but the “jokes” belied a more complex truth. I had screwed up. I had broken a fundamental rule of the corporate world, which a friend explained to me this way: “Businesses want a happy face presented at all times. You didn’t do that.” While that’s true, in Aspen Skiing Company’s case it was more that they didn’t want to feel attacked by one of their own. I hadn’t expressed myself well to the journalist, and so the article misrepresented me. As a result, as progressive as we were, and as supported as I was, few people at Aspen Skiing Company understood what I had been trying to say in the article. After it came out, I had long conversations with many vice presidents about it, and I had to answer pointed questions from the CEO in front of a gathering of some thirty managers. It was painful, and I hada vague feeling of nausea for several weeks afterward. And I lost some credibility in the company. About a year later, however, I came into my office and discovered on my desk an article torn from Fast Company magazine about Patagonia’s efforts to reveal the entire ecological footprint of some of its products. On the article, our CEO, Mike Kaplan, who had just returned from a green business conference in California, had scrawled: “Auden, should we be more ‘transparent’?”
I hit the ceiling. “Transparency” was exactly what got me into so much trouble in the first place. I had tried to speak the truth about the challenges of actually implementing green business practices, and look where it got me. Sure, I could
have been more eloquent and careful with the press, but in the end the article was a study in transparency. I stormed
into Mike’s office waving the article. Mike was laughing. He got it. And at that moment, I had an epiphany: All along, during and after the publication of the Businessweek article, I had assumed that everyone in the company, including the CEO, shared my understanding of sustainability theory, of the desperate need for brutal, even embarrassing, openness. I had mistakenly thought that the sort of self-criticism I was trying for in the article would make sense.
But I had been incredibly naïve. I have spent twenty years thinking about these issues; there’s no way I should have expected other managers with extensive backgrounds in other areas, but not necessarily in sustainability, to have my level of understanding, any more than the IT guy should expect me to know how to write code. I was moving too fast: I’d been
delinquent in educating employees in the key ideas of sustainable business. The problem is that my situation is not unique; it’s pervasive. Implementing the kind of change that will solve global warming is a slow, grueling process. And it’s not even on the radar in most companies. Time is very limited. Yet businesses continue to shy away from transparency. I was recently on a panel with a vice president of environment for GM, and everything that came out of her mouth made GM appear to be God’s gift to the environment. It is not. GM has consistently opposed increasing gas taxes, raising fuel efficiency standards, and passing climate legislation. That is changing. But instead of saying “We’re great, love us!” why couldn’t the VP simply have said: “We are a big, old company—one of the biggest and oldest in the world. We haven’t been very progressive over the years, that’s true. But we’re trying to change, and here’s what we’re doing.” That would have played vastly better than her spiel that created a constellation of eye-rolling in the audience. Why didn’t she speak plainly then? The answer is that, as my friend told me, corporations want everything to be happy smiley faces most of the time, and that’s a big cultural obstacle to break down.
In the end, we face a series of major obstacles—barriers to transparency, to new ideas, to new products. And we desperately need to find a way around those barriers so that we can make stuff happen, on big and small scales alike. In effect, we have to overcome a series of “no’s.” My old boss Amory Lovins likes to quote Wallace Stevens on this point: “After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.” This book is about how you get to that “yes.”
even jaded environmental foot soldiers like me optimistic. First, Barack Obama got elected, an eye-watering miracle in
itself. Next, he appointed an astonishingly well-qualified dream team to all the most critical climate policy positions.
Carol Browner, who understands climate change, its consequences, and policy solutions as well as anyone on the
planet, took the new position of White House climate czar. Nobel laureate Stephen Chu, who has been outspoken on
the need for drastic action to address greenhouse gas emissions, became head of the Department of Energy. Lisa Jackson
took over at the Environmental Protection Agency and immediately made it clear that her agency would regulate
CO2 as a pollutant. Colorado senator Ken Salazar, as clear a thinker on the value of the new energy economy as I’ve ever
heard speak, took over at Interior. And modern-day climate warriors like Cathy Zoi and Nancy Sutley accepted senior
positions as well. Meanwhile, what many are now calling “the Great Recession” of 2007–2009 actually reduced CO2
emissions in the United States, and realities like peak oil suggest that we may necessarily see some level of decline in
CO2 emissions, whether we work to make it happen or not. This is hugely encouraging news. It even looks like we
may enact the most important single policy I call for in this book, the sine qua non of a climate change solution—
climate legislation that puts a price on carbon dioxide emissions— within a year.
And yet . . . after climate legislation passes, I worry that there’s going to be an awful Monday morning when we wakeup after a weekend of partying and realize that, yes, policy is in place, and yes, energy costs more—its high price has sent
a signal to the markets to get more efficient—and yes, we are on our way. But then what? On that day, as we swill our coffee, we’re going to need to reach for the battered glove on the cover of this book. Because in the end, solving climate change is going to be about honest implementation of real solutions and shared stories of all the pain and suffering and
glory that entails. Only a brutal openness about how to do this work will enable us to move forward rapidly by learning
from each other. That is what this book is about. One of the greatest challenges we run into in the trenches,
as you’ll learn here, is that when it comes to confronting the climate crisis, social, cultural, and human barriers to change
abound. Even the story behind this book itself is an illustration of the challenges of driving big-scale change.
This book, in part, was an outgrowth of a front-page story about my work in Businessweek. The title was “Little
Green Lies,” and the point of the story was, in theory, that the business community hasn’t been entirely forthcoming
about the insane difficulty of implementing sustainability. Businesses that are trying really, really hard, like Wal-Mart or
Aspen Skiing Company, where I work, aren’t succeeding at the only thing that matters: reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Instead, most tout minor green initiatives that make them look good but don’t really matter in the long term.
When I got to work the Monday after the article came out, my office was empty: no furniture, no wall hangings,
nothing. It was as if I’d been fired. It turned out that clearing my office was a joke on the part of our CFO.
There were other jokes, too. Our vice president of human resources had called me the Friday the article came out and said, “Please see me at the office on Monday morning as soon as you get in.” I called his home, called his cell, and e-mailed
him, in something of a panic. “If this is about the article,” I thought, “I’m screwed. But if it’s about something else I’m
not even aware of, I’m probably in even bigger trouble. And I really don’t want to spend the weekend thinking about this.”
He finally called me that night, laughing. It was all pretty funny, but the “jokes” belied a more complex truth. I had screwed up. I had broken a fundamental rule of the corporate world, which a friend explained to me this way: “Businesses want a happy face presented at all times. You didn’t do that.” While that’s true, in Aspen Skiing Company’s case it was more that they didn’t want to feel attacked by one of their own. I hadn’t expressed myself well to the journalist, and so the article misrepresented me. As a result, as progressive as we were, and as supported as I was, few people at Aspen Skiing Company understood what I had been trying to say in the article. After it came out, I had long conversations with many vice presidents about it, and I had to answer pointed questions from the CEO in front of a gathering of some thirty managers. It was painful, and I hada vague feeling of nausea for several weeks afterward. And I lost some credibility in the company. About a year later, however, I came into my office and discovered on my desk an article torn from Fast Company magazine about Patagonia’s efforts to reveal the entire ecological footprint of some of its products. On the article, our CEO, Mike Kaplan, who had just returned from a green business conference in California, had scrawled: “Auden, should we be more ‘transparent’?”
I hit the ceiling. “Transparency” was exactly what got me into so much trouble in the first place. I had tried to speak the truth about the challenges of actually implementing green business practices, and look where it got me. Sure, I could
have been more eloquent and careful with the press, but in the end the article was a study in transparency. I stormed
into Mike’s office waving the article. Mike was laughing. He got it. And at that moment, I had an epiphany: All along, during and after the publication of the Businessweek article, I had assumed that everyone in the company, including the CEO, shared my understanding of sustainability theory, of the desperate need for brutal, even embarrassing, openness. I had mistakenly thought that the sort of self-criticism I was trying for in the article would make sense.
But I had been incredibly naïve. I have spent twenty years thinking about these issues; there’s no way I should have expected other managers with extensive backgrounds in other areas, but not necessarily in sustainability, to have my level of understanding, any more than the IT guy should expect me to know how to write code. I was moving too fast: I’d beendelinquent in educating employees in the key ideas of sustainable business. The problem is that my situation is not unique; it’s pervasive. Implementing the kind of change that will solve global warming is a slow, grueling process. And it’s not even on the radar in most companies. Time is very limited. Yet businesses continue to shy away from transparency. I was recently on a panel with a vice president of environment for GM, and everything that came out of her mouth made GM appear to be God’s gift to the environment. It is not. GM has consistently opposed increasing gas taxes, raising fuel efficiency standards, and passing climate legislation. That is changing. But instead of saying “We’re great, love us!” why couldn’t the VP simply have said: “We are a big, old company—one of the biggest and oldest in the world. We haven’t been very progressive over the years, that’s true. But we’re trying to change, and here’s what we’re doing.” That would have played vastly better than her spiel that created a constellation of eye-rolling in the audience. Why didn’t she speak plainly then? The answer is that, as my friend told me, corporations want everything to be happy smiley faces most of the time, and that’s a big cultural obstacle to break down.
In the end, we face a series of major obstacles—barriers to transparency, to new ideas, to new products. And we desperately need to find a way around those barriers so that we can make stuff happen, on big and small scales alike. In effect, we have to overcome a series of “no’s.” My old boss Amory Lovins likes to quote Wallace Stevens on this point: “After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.” This book is about how you get to that “yes.”Here's the new preface from the paperback edition:
