Getting Green Done: Hard Truths From the Front Lines Of the Sustainability Revolution [Paperback]

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.

Purchasing this title, I expected to gain insight into how to "Get Green Done". But instead this book is more of rant on how difficult it is to implement green ideas. ( I didn't need to purchase this title to know that.) I suppose walking in the author's shoes helps some readers gain an insight into the difficulties those of us who are facility managers, and other implementers in the environmental sustainability movement, have getting energy efficiency and other emissions reduction actions funded and installed. I did not gain a significant insight into how to overcome traditional inhibitors and boundaries. As a global energy efficiency manager for a major manufacturer, reading this text unfortunately confirmed what I already knew. I felt like someone was recording the last 10 years of my career, putting it down in text for all to read. I suspect that any active participant in the environmental sustainability movement, especially those working in or consulting for Corporate America, will have the same opinion.

All is not bad, though. There are some interesting facts & figures. Along with plenty of editorial commentary and viewpoint, some of which I don't totally agree with. But the point of an editorial is to share an opinion and initiate your own thought. I just didn't know this was what I was purchasing.

Ignore the accolades the book has received, most being from colleagues and acquaintances of the author. Also be wary of quantified information, since the data that I'm familiar with first-hand is wrong. "Ford spent $2 billion at greening its Rouge auto plant in Dearborn..." Auden, it was $317M, not $2B. Ooops! "...they decided to install a green roof...planted with grasses" Wrong again, Auden. It's a mixture of sedum and other low growing groundcovers, installed to help address a storm water management issue at the site. Ouch! "And the roof leaks" Sorry, Auden, that roof does not leak. Wait a minute, did you even talk to Ford or visit the Rouge?!? Don't bother answering, I know where these `facts' came from. Of all the articles and publications written about the greening of the Rouge, there is one inaccurate article floating around the 'net with the exact same inaccuracies. Where did the author get his facts? From Google searches and Wikipedia? The inaccuracy of these and other facts made me question the author's research and attention to detail. The author's bias toward Toyota and Honda is also disappointing.

This book is an entertaining read, I'll give the author that much. And I'm sure many bits of information are correct. Just take a tip from a fellow green industry insider...verify your facts before sharing.

I'm sure the author feels better after getting all this frustration off his chest. Personally, I'm still searching for a book regarding the implementation of sustainable solutions that beats Natural Capitalism by Amory Lovins.

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

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