Will Steffen Quotes

Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.

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.

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.

Urban retrofitting: creating different sorts of spaces and uses out of places that are already there.

If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.

Finding mechanisms for putting carbon back into landscapes enhances biodiversity. More biodiverse ecosystems store more carbon, more securely and are more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

It's not just enough to survive. We've got to make something better than what we've got.

Carbon zero simply means that the emissions you are releasing either are zero or balance out to zero.

There is no such thing as garbage, just useful stuff in the wrong place.

Powerful people doing bad things LIKE cynical, despairing citizens.

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.

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

Saying the Tech Bloom is not commercially driven is like saying Mother Teresa had an interest in the poor.

Cabbies in particular seem to like discussing the fate the Earth.

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.

The denser places get, the lower the amount of energy people use to get around it.

By looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we're setting ourselves up not to solve it.

I read once that sorrow looks back, worry looks around, and faith looks ahead.

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.

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.

What makes creative people tingle are interesting problems, the chance to impress their friends, and caffeine.

Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in western popular culture, but in reality, our cynicism advances the desires of the powerful: cynicism is obedience.

Kids born today will see us navigate past the first greatest test of humanity, which is: can we actually be smart enough to live on a planet without destroying it?