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In almost all city governments in America, the small group of people who don't want change are able to block change.

Alex Steffen

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Alex Steffen
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Environmentalist
Writer
Oakland
California
Small
Almost
Change
Governments
America
Block
Government
Group
Able
City
People
Groups
Cities

More quotes by Alex Steffen

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There’s more to being an environmentalist than occasionally signing an online petition and mailing your check to the Sierra Club. Really the most effective environmental actions you can take have to do with crafting your home and surroundings, your workplace decisions and your investment habits.
Alex Steffen
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The denser places get, the lower the amount of energy people use to get around it.
Alex Steffen
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The planet's biggest problems have to do with sustainability, environmental decline, global poverty, disease, conflict and so forth. Really, they're all interconnected - it's one big problem, which is that the way we're doing things can't go on.
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I think there's a gigantic generation gap in terms of how people understand the Internet and how much they think technology is an important factor in social change.
Alex Steffen
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Powerful people doing bad things LIKE cynical, despairing citizens.
Alex Steffen
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Cities offer us powerful leverage on our most stubborn, wasteful practices. Long commutes in our cars, big power bills from our energy-hogging buildings, shopping trips to buy stuff that'll spend a few short months in our homes and long centuries in our landfills.
Alex Steffen
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Deep walkability describes a city that is built in such a way that you can move from one area to another on foot, on bicycle, on transit and have an experience that remains a pleasant one, that you feel you are welcome not just in the neighborhood but moving between neighborhoods.
Alex Steffen
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Cabbies in particular seem to like discussing the fate the Earth.
Alex Steffen
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Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.
Alex Steffen
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By looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we're setting ourselves up not to solve it.
Alex Steffen
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Cities are responsible for the vast majority of the creation of the economy. They're also places into which we pour the vast majority of resources, the vast majority of energy and the places where a huge percentage of the decisions about how systems are built and how products designed, etc., happen.
Alex Steffen
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Cities generate most of the global economy, and most of its energy use, resource demands and climate emissions. How we build cities over the next decades will largely determine whether we can deliver a bright green future.
Alex Steffen
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Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience.
Alex Steffen
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At its very heart, Worldchanging is about using the best of people's new ideas, bringing them together and applying them to the massive problems that we all face.
Alex Steffen
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We have to craft new political realities, not only in places like India, Afghanistan, Kenya, Pakistan, but here at home as well. Another world is possible.
Alex Steffen
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Saying the Tech Bloom is not commercially driven is like saying Mother Teresa had an interest in the poor.
Alex Steffen
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Carbon zero simply means that the emissions you are releasing either are zero or balance out to zero.
Alex Steffen
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It's not just enough to survive. We've got to make something better than what we've got.
Alex Steffen
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I think we're going to start to see a new model of civic advocacy where people get together once in a while to protest, but it's more about an ongoing, sustained engagement in issues, networks and communities about which people care.
Alex Steffen
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By fundamentally changing how we design the places and systems that enable our daily lives, we can slash emissions way beyond the immediate carbon savings - because our own personal emissions are just the tip of a vast iceberg of energy and resources consumed far from our view.
Alex Steffen