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Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution
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Product Description
In this witty and contrarian book, Auden Schendler, a sustainable business foot soldier with over a decade’s worth of experience, gives us a peek under the hood of the green movement. The consultants, he argues, are clueless. Fluorescent bulbs might be better for our atmosphere, but what do you say to the boutique hotel owner who thinks they detract from his?
We’ll only solve our problems if we’re realistic about the challenge of climate change. In this eye-opening, inspiring book, Schendler illuminates the path.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #385266 in Books
- Published on: 2009-02-23
- Released on: 2009-02-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .90" h x 5.75" w x 8.60" l, 1.09 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9781586486372
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Prius drivers and recyclers take note: according to debut author Schendler, your efforts to be environmentally correct are admirable, but are hardly the kind of urgent, unified action we need to really make an impact on global climate change. In fact, he says, by focusing on small individual actions, you may be actually harming the environmental movement. A pioneer in the sustainability movement, Schendler points out that "there is a hangover from the 1970s that continues to hamper the environmental movement today." Using examples from his own consulting work as the executive director of Community and Environmental Responsibility at Aspen Skiing Company, he asserts that real change can only come from tough decisions by big businesses and through legislation. Rather than sacrificing ROI to integrate green practices, Schendler says that companies must make profit-driven decisions that complement their business models in order to carry out meaningful and lasting environmental change. By challenging status quo thinking about sustainability and taking the point of view of the business executive and the worker in the field, Schendler offers a perspective that is refreshingly realistic and pragmatic. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"The sobering conclusion that I have reached, after traveling to Germany, the UK, Japan, and several U.S. states, is that even the greenest nations are not planning anything like what is needed—they say some green words, but their actions don't match the scale of the problem. Getting Green Done defines strategies that will actually help. It's an antidote and an alternative to "greenwash," the fraud perpetrated by governments and the fossil fuel industry that threatens our planet and our children."
Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute and author of Einstein: His Life and Universe
"A lot of people talk about climate change, but Auden Schendler combats it every day. He also makes the issue fun to read about. This is an amusing, anecdotal, as well as highly informative account of what can be done to help the environment in ways large and small."
Jeffrey Swartz, President and CEO, Timberland
“Entertaining insights from a true climate crusader … Sure to inspire business leaders striving to make their organization more sustainable.”
Publishers Weekly, January 12, 2009
“Prius drivers and recyclers take note: according to debut author Schendler, your efforts to be environmentally correct are admirable, but are hardly the kind of urgent, unified action we need to really make an impact on global climate change…By challenging status quo thinking about sustainability and taking the point of view of the business executive and the worker in the field, Schendler offers a perspective that is refreshingly realistic and pragmatic.”
Dr. James E. Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
“The sobering conclusion that I have reached, after traveling to Germany, the UK, Japan, and several U.S. states, is that even the greenest nations are not planning anything like what is needed—they say some green words, but their actions don't match the scale of the problem. Getting Green Done defines strategies that will actually help. It's an antidote and an alternative to ‘greenwash,’ the fraud perpetrated by governments and the fossil fuel industry that threatens our planet and our children."
Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute and author of Einstein: His Life and Universe
“A lot of people talk about climate change, but Auden Schendler combats it every day. He also makes the issue fun to read about. This is an amusing, anecdotal, as well as highly informative account of what can be done to help the environment in ways large and small.”
Jeffrey Swartz, President and CEO, Timberland
“Entertaining insights from a true climate crusader … Sure to inspire business leaders striving to make their organization more sustainable.”
Booklist, 2/13
“Schendler frames his environmentally sound arguments in practical terms every business executive, home owner, and government official can relate to.”
Ski Press World, February issue
“A dirty job and a damned good book”
Boston Globe
“‘Getting Green Done’ is a valuable tonic against the sophistry that saving the planet is as easy as a beach stroll.”
Denver Post, 3/29
“With an easy, witty flow, Schendler urgently prods already-recycling readers to ‘hit the reset button.’ The book is a trumpet call ushering in an age of environmental enlightenment.”
Grist, 4/1
“Anyone with a passing interest in these issues would likely find it engaging reading. And for corporate sustainability officers, it should be required.”
American Park Network
“Schendler’s frank narrative yanks off our rose (and green) colored glasses and in a very entertaining and enlightening way challenges us to make a difference in the climate change process and debate.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Auden Schendler is blowing a metaphorical raspberry at the kind of hybrid-driving, plastic bag-banning environmentalists for which Seattle is known.”
Charlotte Observer
“In ‘Getting Green Done,’ [Schendler] brings our monumental environmental challenges into focus and offers inspiring ideas and practical tips about how each of us can address them.”
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Double dose of reality -- highly recommended
I'd like to meet Auden Schendler. We see eye to eye on many issues, and debating the others would be a rare pleasure.
His new book remedies today's green euphoria with a double dose of reality -- illustrating the barriers, frustrations and failures of sustainability with stories from the author's experience.
Challenges or no, much must be done to avert climate change. Schendler (who researched Natural Capitalism) places responsibility squarely on the shoulders of business, which he says has a level of influence and impact second only to large governments.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is a sustainability director or thinking of championing green initiatives in the workplace. My full-length review for Energy Priorities magazine is at http://energypriorities.com/entries/2009/02/getting_green_done.php
Schendler devotes a chapter each to green energy and green buildings, because he feels (as I do) that these are at the core of the solution to climate change. He promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy as the solutions, and sees energy as the thing that matters most when designing green buildings.
He blasts sustainability consultants and green gurus; dismisses individual conservation; disparages the media and books like Green to Gold and unabashedly criticizes LEED. Overall a very enjoyable read with many excellent stories from the trenches of sustainability warfare.
Great Book on the Realities of Sustainability
Auden Schendler's new book Getting Green Done is a kind of mixture of tales from the real sustainability front, a battle cry to action, and something of a slap on the wrist of those who aren't working directly on climate change, messing around with things like schemes to cut back on plastic grocery bags, use potatoes as currency, and sticker Hummers. It's a good, fun read (something we can all use in these troubling economic times), and for those of you new to the entire climate challenge, consider this book Climate 101---your first climate course.
Schendler touches on most of the main climate topics (how fast it's happening, why it's important, what it might do to industries like his own, etc.), but he makes some excellent and very important points that have heretofore not been part of the green revolution's messaging plan.
One is the notion that this movement needs more grunts than visionaries. Every person and his/her dog is claiming to be a visionary in the green space these days--what does that really mean, especially when many of them have just arrived in this space? I can name dozens of green "gurus" who've been doing this stuff less than five years and already call themselves visionary. (Oh really?)
Auden also points out, repeatedly and quite successfully, at just how hard it is to change things from "business as usual." Even a lighting retrofit, which most of us would consider a no-brainer, becomes a lengthy, involved, mangled process as Schendler attempts one in the parking garage at the Little Nell hotel in Aspen.
Ultimately, Schendler explains, doing this stuff is so hard that those of us in the sustainability community need to share the failure stories just as much as we share the successes. That's how we'll all learn, that's how we'll all improve.
One of the things I most feared was any kind of self-righteousness. Reading the press the Aspen Skiing Company has received over the years for its green efforts has been a sort of a turn off. Mostly, because, as Schendler told me in an interview for Mountain Gazette recently, "I wasn't in charge of the message."
But Schendler's book doesn't come across as preachy, and he explains the value of shameful self-promotion, especially when that self-promotion is of the BS kind. (He relates lecturing to a crowd about getting a ski tow to run on renewable energy; they applaud, then Auden explains how lame that effort--in the big scheme of things--really was).
The most salient point, however, is the urgency of what he, and we, are up to. Climate change is thundering toward us like Heath Ledger in A Knight's Tale, and we need to start addressing it--failing and succeeding, but mostly acting-- now, if not sooner.
Cam Burns, Mountain Gazette
Great addition to the sustainability library
This book is an in-depth look into the trenches of sustainable business that will be useful to people in the industry-- and it tells great stories that will appeal to the casual/ new-to-sustainability reader.
Schendler doesn't hold anything back-- he admits that making business more sustainable is challenging. That may sound simple, but a lot of the green business literature out there makes it sound like 'green' is a no-brainer and automatically results in business success. If the business community is going to figure out how to implement sustainable practices, we need more people to share success stories AND the not-so-successful attempts, as Schendler does here.
