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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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Alex Steffen
Age: 57
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Environmentalist
Writer
Oakland
California
Nothing
Obedience
Going
Benefits
Think
Days
Thinking
Happy
Cynicism
Fact
Status
Facts
Optimism
Political
Benefit
Better
Perfectly

More quotes by Alex Steffen

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Our cities need to change, fast. Tactical Urbanism is a guided tour of solutions created when local people decide they can't wait for politics to catch up before they improve their neighborhoods. This weathervane book deserves a place on any urbanist's bookshelf.
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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.
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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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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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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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For most people, using the Internet broadens their sense of who 'we' is and actually ends up leaving us in a place of greater compassion and understanding. It leaves us more connected to a larger group of people and more at one with a lot more people in our community.
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Carbon zero simply means that the emissions you are releasing either are zero or balance out to zero.
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Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.
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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.
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The denser places get, the lower the amount of energy people use to get around it.
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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.
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There is no such thing as garbage, just useful stuff in the wrong place.
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Cabbies in particular seem to like discussing the fate the Earth.
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If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.
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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You don't change the world by hiding in the woods, wearing a hair shirt, or buying indulgences in the form of 'Save the Earth' bumper stickers. You do it by articulating a vision for the future and pursuing it with all the ingenuity humanity can muster.
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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In almost all city governments in America, the small group of people who don't want change are able to block change.
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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