Alex Steffen
Alex Steffen
Alex Steffen is an American futurist who writes and speaks about sustainability and the future of the planet...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
applied appreciate architects creativity design designers early fascinated love pleasure realized source talent talking
I'm fascinated with design. I realized early that I had no talent in that direction, but I love talking with architects and designers about what they do. I appreciate applied creativity as a source of pleasure and meaning.
businesses given life opportunity ourselves people prospects transform
If people are given the opportunity to really make a difference in their own lives, their own communities, their own businesses and their own governments, then we can really transform the prospects of life on this planet. We can find ourselves living in a world that is more like the world that I think most of us want to be living in.
hard health imagine natural recovering
It's not that hard to imagine the natural world recovering it's health in our absence: it's more difficult, and more necessary, to imagine it recovering its health in our presence.
activism effects side urban
One of the most unfortunate side effects of the urban activism of the '60s and '70s is the belief that development is wrong and that fighting it makes you an environmentalist.
almost bit brutal fix less likely sprawling suburbs
The brutal reality is that newer, more sprawling suburbs - and especially the cheap boom-years exburbs - aren't just a bit unsustainable, they're ruinously unsustainable in almost every way, and nothing we know of will likely stop their decline, much less fix them easily.
closets deal finding full giant lots people plenty spaces stuff whether
There are plenty of people out there talking about how difficult it is for some of us to just deal with all the stuff we already have, from packed closets that need organizers to storage spaces to maintenance costs, etc. Lots of people are reevaluating whether or not they need giant garages full of stuff and finding that they don't.
build future hardest
We already have many of the technologies and tools that we need to build a sustainable future. What we don't have is a new way of thinking, and that's really the hardest part.
bad change changed climate continue less matter planet playing preventing rather
We unfortunately already live on a planet where the climate has changed and will continue to change no matter what we do now. We're playing a game of making the problem less bad rather than preventing it.
created people
People - especially the geeks who created it - have tended to look at the Internet as something that's hermetically sealed: there's the Internet and the rest of the world. But that's not how people want to use the Internet. They want to use it as a way of better navigating the real world.
chemical depend diversity ecological gas health including life limits multitude prosperity respecting shared toxic war water
We don't need a War on Carbon. We need a new prosperity that can be shared by all while still respecting a multitude of real ecological limits - not just atmospheric gas concentrations, but topsoil depth, water supplies, toxic chemical concentrations, and the health of ecosystems, including the diversity of life they depend upon.
decide paying people whether worth
If nothing else, the Internet allows people to put their ideas out there and let the world decide whether they're worth paying attention to.
climate
The most climate friendly trip we are ever going to take is the trip we never had to take because we were close to what we wanted.
floor stuff
More is not better. Better is better. You don't need a bigger house; you need a different floor plan. You don't need more stuff; you need stuff you'll actually use.
change currently energy entire simply society source works
The idea that we are going to be able to take our entire society as it currently works and simply change the source of energy and make it sustainable is not actually congruent with reality.