Global Warming: Innovators: Forging the Future: The Climate Crusaders

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If the 1998 fires set in Vail, Colo., by protesters from Earth Liberation Front were an environmental wake-up call for the ski industry, Auden Schendler, 35, is a triple shot of espresso. Hired the next year by Aspen Skiing Co. (ASC), he has become the most visible of a crop of experts charged with cleaning up the industry's act. Between keeping the lodges toasty and draining the creeks for snowmaking, downhill-skiing companies in the late 1990s were major consumers of natural resources. And ASC, which now operates four mountains, two hotels and 12 restaurants in the Aspen-Snowmass area, was one of the biggest. Its snowmaking operations alone consume some 160 million gallons of water a year.

Schendler set about changing that. ASC had already invested $10.5 million in efficient snowmaking equipment that saved more than 6 million gallons of water in one year. At Schendler's urging, it became the first ski company to issue a climate-change policy, with a public commitment to cutting greenhouse gases that has led to a 75% reduction in emissions. ASC was the first to use biodiesel fuel in snowcats, issue sustainability reports and develop a green building policy.

A graduate of Bowdoin College, Schendler insulated trailers for the poor before joining Amory Lovins' famed Rocky Mountain Institute. He found a kindred spirit in ASC president and CEO Pat O'Donnell, although the road to environmental enlightenment at ASC hasn't always been smooth. It took four years to persuade the company to retrofit a parking garage with fluorescent light fixtures, a move Schendler calculates rid the atmosphere of 300,000 lbs. of CO2 annually.

A prolific writer and major supporter of the Keep Winter Cool campaign, a partnership between the ski industry and the Natural Resources Defense Council, Schendler feels he has helped change the culture of skiing, at least at ASC. "We've turned this place into a lab for addressing climate change," he says. "Aspen is a lever that can change the world." --By Rita Healy/Denver

THE POLLUTION FIGHTERS Delhi Without Diesel

Melting ice caps didn't figure into the fight Sunita Narain and Bhure Lal led to build the world's cleanest public-transport network. They had more pressing concerns. "New Delhi was choking to death," says Narain, 43, director of India's Center for Science and Environment. "Air pollution was taking one life per hour." Adds Lal, 63, then a senior government administrator: "The capital was one of the most polluted on earth. At the end of the day, your collar was black, and you had soot all over your face. Millions had bronchitis and asthma."

In the mid-1990s, Narain filed a lawsuit to force Delhi's buses, taxis and rickshaws to convert to cleaner-burning compressed natural gas (CNG). In July 1998, the Supreme Court ruled largely in her favor and adopted many of her proposals. It ordered a ban on leaded fuel, conversion of all diesel-powered buses to CNG and the scrapping of old diesel taxis and rickshaws. But busmakers and oil companies--supported by government ministers--objected loudly. So the court formed a committee, led by Lal and Narain, to enforce its judgment.