Alex Steffen Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“For carbon-neutral cities, there are things worth talking about in how our consumption patterns can change - sharing goods, etc. - but those are a fraction of the impacts of transportation and building energy use. If we need to choose priority actions, the most important things are to densify, provide transit, and green the buildings.”

“There are a lot of different ways of building a prosperous society, and some of them use much less energy than others. And it is possible and more practical to talk about rebuilding systems to use much less energy than it is to think about trying to meet greater demands of energy through clean energy alone.”

“There's a lot of evidence that shows that if we push as hard as we need to for net-zero emissions, we'll find ourselves with cities that are more secure, healthier, and have more economic opportunity - are frankly better cities to live in - than if we settle for the status quo.”

“Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives - and may even extend our stay on Earth.”

“Climate change is not a discrete issue; it's a symptom of larger problems. Fundamentally, our society as currently designed has no future. We're chewing up the planet so fast, in so many different ways, that we could solve the climate problem tomorrow and still find that environmental collapse is imminent.”

“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.”

“The biggest thing growing cities need to do is minimize barriers to development so that as long as someone is doing good urbanism, they can get permitted quickly and get building quickly.”

“There's no really rosy scenario ahead, where climate change just doesn't happen, but I believe we don't have the ethical right to throw our hands up in the air and say, 'Game over.' Whatever pathway we choose, our descendants will be dealing with that reality for centuries to come.”

“We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can't even afford to continue that way of life ourselves.”

“We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt.”