Colorado skiing company planning report to justify suing oil companies

Aspen One recently published a report that it says it has information that could be used to sue oil and gas companies.

Aspen One, a Colorado-based company that manages ski resorts and retail shops, released its 2024 sustainability report, which it titled "25 Years of Questions," which calls on businesses and corporations to go beyond the traditional Environmental, Social, and Governance and take a greater role in climate activism.

The company said it has a climate change study it plans to publish in a peer-reviewed journal that will help activists sue oil and gas companies.

"In late 2023, Aspen One funded Dr. Daniel Scott of the University of Waterloo, Canada, to take on a weird project: running a climate model to see what the West would look like if the climate of the 1960s-70s had remained and if the anthropogenic climate change observed in the 1980s to the 2020s had not occurred," the report said. "The results—which will be published in a peer-reviewed journal—can be used to sue the fossil fuel industry for damages. Anyone interested?"

Larry Behren, communications Director for Power The Future, called the remark from Apsen, "pathetic" in a statement emailed to The Center Square.

"The default setting of the environmental left when they are out of power is to disrupt and delay, and this pathetic effort falls along those lines," Behren said in the release. "The American people faced a clear choice just weeks ago, and they chose energy dominance over the radical green agenda. So, to hear that they will now work against what the American people want proves they're just as out of touch as we always believed. They know the taxpayer-funded environmental gravy train is coming to an end, so now they're going to use all their resources to delay and disrupt, no matter how much it hurts working families."

Aspen claims that Corporate Social Responsibility includes exactly "what the fossil fuel industry wants us to do to avoid disrupting the status quo."

Those things include: carbon targets, carbon footprint reduction, offset purchases, reporting, emissions tracking, third-party certifications, operational greening, measuring waste and water, according to the report.

Here is what it says companies should do instead, according to the release:

• Use of corporate and CEO voice

• Op-eds demanding climate action

• Movement building

• Customer mobilization

• Pressuring trade groups

• Calling peer businesses to account

• Radical transparency and honesty

• PAC funding for good

• Resigning from misaligned trade groups and partnerships

• Crafting and supporting legislation

• Backing climate-forward candidates

• Freaking out the fossil fuel industry

Additionally, the report further explains why the company sees carbon emissions reduction targets as insufficient:

"Solving climate change requires that we stop burning stuff," the report from Aspen said. "A sustainability program focused on setting carbon targets and then pursuing reduction goals means businesses take responsibility for a problem they didn't create. It absolves the fossil fuel industry of blame; it ensures the use of bogus offsets; and it takes management's eye off the ball of systemic change. In other words, it stalls out meaningful action. We protest that approach, and for good reason. Recently, Delta Airlines got sued for its carbon neutral claim."