Green business guru Auden Schendler doesn't really care if you take reusable bags to the grocery store. Or recycle your soda cans. Or even drive a Prius.

As a matter of fact, he'd probably be happier if you dropped all that and stopped feeling so smug.

In his new book, "Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution" (Public Affairs, $26.95), Schendler argues that good intentions and token actions are getting us nowhere. In fact, they're getting in the way of real progress.

"Right now, a great deal of energy is being wasted on efforts that make people feel good but miss the point, which is simple and ambitious: We need to drastically reduce carbon emissions," Schendler says. "Clean energy is the crucial piece of solving the climate challenge. Our very future depends on how successfully we separate meaningful action from bogus energy programs."

In other words, skipping the cardboard sleeve on your daily Starbucks isn't going to cut it.

GENERATE YOUR OWN POWER

Schendler, a self-described agitator, has the credentials to talk so tough. He's helped businesses cut millions of pounds of carbon dioxide. Time magazine named him a "Climate Crusader" in 2006, and he brought paper giant Kimberly-Clark and Greenpeace to the bargaining table. For more than a decade, Schendler has been cleaning up big business by getting his own hands dirty.

So, what can you do? Find your biggest lever, Schendler says. Ask yourself — as an individual or a corporation — what you can do that will have the most impact. At Aspen Skiing Co., where Schendler is executive director of sustainability, that lever is the Colorado mountain town's high profile.

Yes, you read that right. Aspen. The epitome of American excess. The playground of the monied elite. Decadence defined. And that's just the way Schendler likes it, because Aspen puts his efforts on the map.

For example, in 2006, Schendler and Aspen Skiing joined a Greenpeace-led boycott of Kleenex maker Kimberly-Clark. The aim was to get the $32 billion paper company to stop using fiber from endangered forests and to increase its use of post-consumer recycled fiber.

The move was seen as a public relations stunt. After all, Aspen bought only about $25,000 in Kleenex products a year and had plenty of its own environmental lapses. Schendler and crew took a beating in the press. One story — headlined "Save the planet, eat a booger" — accused the company of flagrant greenwashing:

"The modern reality is that the louder a corporation blows its own recycled aluminum trumpet on environmental issues, the more offensive that profit-seeking organization likely is to our global well-being," an Aspen Times columnist wrote. "Good for Skico to focus so much of their own internal marketing resources lately on letting the world know about this ecological travesty disguised as mucus absorption technology."

CAST A WIDER NET

But a surprising thing happened two weeks later. Kimberly-Clark's CEO reached out to the small ski company, and soon teams from each side were face to face discussing the boycott. Schendler also convinced Kimberly-Clark to meet with Greenpeace.

"In the end, what some had called Aspen Skiing Co.'s 'craven act of greenwashing' leveraged a long-term, ongoing, and serious CEO-level conversation about Kimberly-Clark's business practices," he says.

What about individuals? "Force the leaders to lead," Schendler writes. Write to your congressional delegation, get in on a march or a street protest, and vote with the environment in mind. Then, after all that's done, you can think about light bulbs.

"From where we stand now, with the time constraints and need for massive action, only government action — on a global scale — can drive the level of change at the speed we require. ... Yes, we should also screw in that efficient light bulb, but without the delusion that such actions are enough."