Degree of difficulty

One degree: In the effort to confront global climate change, a single degree of warmth may seem insignificant. But at Aspen Skiing Co., which runs one of the world's top ski resorts, a single degree is the margin between viability and disaster.

"To be in business," says Patrick O'Donnell, who was Aspen's CEO and environmental conscience for a decade before retiring in November, "we rely on putting down 2 feet of good [artificial] snow, good hard snow that we make the last two weeks of October and the first two weeks of November. That way, when March comes, we can still have skiing, we can still get a full rate for our lift tickets.

"But many of those nights in the fall, we make snow right on the bubble. I've had the staff go back and collect the records — we often make snow within one degree, or one-and-a-half degrees, of being able to. If we can't do it, we have a problem."

At Aspen, the weather is the business, and there is a sense of urgency bordering on panic about climate change. So it is a matter not only of citizenship but also of self-preservation that the company has been a determined pioneer in corporate environmentalism — a leader not just in the tourism industry, where hanging up a damp bath towel typically counts as eco-consciousness, but also in the broader business landscape.

Auden Schendler is Aspen's director of environmental affairs. He came to the resort from Amory Lovins's renowned environmental think tank, the Rocky Mountain Institute, seven years ago. Schendler, 36, has a tall, tan, square-jawed look that makes him seem more like a ski instructor (he was one) than an enviro-geek. But he knows the hardscrabble aspects of environmentalism firsthand. He once spent six months making energy-saving improvements to mobile homes, snaking beneath the trailers to patch holes and install insulation.

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Today, Schendler has his hands and head in projects across Aspen's hotels, clubs, and mountains — Aspen, Snowmass, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk. The sheer range and imagination of the resort's environmental and conservation efforts is stunning. And yet at Aspen, the more the staff does, the more nervous everyone gets about that one degree.

Aspen uses biodiesel fuel in its bulldozer-sized snowcats, the machines that work through winter nights grooming ski slopes. The company's vehicle shop — which maintains those snowcats plus dozens of shuttle buses and snowmobiles — is partly heated with used motor oil from the vehicles, poured directly from the drain pans into a furnace fuel tank. On its slopes, Aspen uses an almost invisible speck of dust to seed each artificial snowflake it makes — a method slightly more expensive than using just water, but one that consumes less water and less energy.

The resort's 20 Coke machines all run on motion sensors, so their compressors don't cycle on and off all night, when no one is buying sodas. The toilets at the new Snowmass golf club have two different flush settings — half flush and full flush — so customers can use less water as needed. Two new, luxurious buildings use nearby ponds, huge heat sinks, as thermal exchanges, providing heat in winter and cooling in summer.

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Aspen adds $2 a day to the bill of every hotel guest, donating it to the Aspen Valley Land Trust to preserve open space. This year, it is offsetting all the greenhouse-gas emissions from its electricity use with wind credits; 45 other ski resorts have followed suit, including Vail. The form Aspen managers complete to request capital-spending, whether for a new toaster or a chairlift, requires an environmental-impact assessment for the project. "You can be rejected for your environmental impact," O'Donnell says. "And if you don't fill it in, we just send the form back. Incomplete."

Which is to say, environmentalism has been layered into Aspen's business operations at every opportunity. Schendler is greeted by name and buttonholed for advice at every turn, from the vehicle-maintenance shop to the front desk at the five-star Little Nell hotel. "My job description is to reduce our environmental impact," he says. "It's all unsexy but crucial. It's good, and I'm proud of it."

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His work isn't easy, though. The reality is that eco-innovation can be maddeningly difficult to make a corporate priority. Even at Aspen, conservation competes for attention and resources. Schendler recalls the restaurant manager who rudely rejected condiment pumps in favor of throwaway plastic packets, and the five years it took to get a $20,000 lighting retrofit in the Little Nell valet parking garage, despite a payback period of two years. "I was arguing against the culture," he says. "In a place like Aspen, at the Little Nell, if I'm the manager and I have $20,000 to spend, I'm going to spend it stocking the wine cellar, or on new sheets and towels, spend it replacing leather furniture in the guest rooms."

Indeed, despite Aspen's growing awareness, the actual results can seem frustratingly incremental. Over the past two years, Schendler and O'Donnell concluded that best practice at Aspen isn't enough. They're increasingly worried about that single degree of temperature. "Am I happy with the pace with which the nation is addressing climate change?" O'Donnell asks. "No."

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