A Quote by Alex Steffen

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.

Alex Steffen

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About Actions Building Buildings Carbon Change Choose Cities Consumption Energy Energy Use Etc Fraction Goods Green How Impacts Important Important Thing Important Things Most Most Important Thing Need Neutral Our Patterns Priority Provide Sharing Talking The Most Important Things Those Transit Transportation Use Worth

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Alex Steffen
American - Writer
Born: 1968

I think green buildings are extremely important but it's only part of the equation. A lot of people think that if I put a green building everything is going to be fine, but actually it's not just the green buildings we need, but green businesses, green governments, green economics. We have to extend the greening of buildings to our business and our lifestyles - that is the most important thing to do next.

Ken Yeang

My first goal would be to reduce the perturbation in the carbon cycle. That would mean using carbon neutral sources of energy, and changing our agricultural practices to be less disruptive and polluting. I'm not talking about a policy here so much as changing the way our infrastructure works. That's why I'm so fascinated with changing the way we build cities, because they are the most developed forms of physical infrastructure for human habitation.

Annalee Newitz

It's hard for people to see how they can change how dismal things look, but there are still wonderful things to sing about. Music is the only way we are capable of talking about the most important things.

Jeff Tweedy

When I'm talking about a developing world, I also look at clean-water access - women who are more vulnerable to sexual violence when they're fetching water. And talking about what we have going on here, with our carbon footprints and our emissions, is just as important to me as figuring out how to provide clean water to people who need it in regions around the world.

Sophia Bush

The language that we use now impacts on the ability to vote, it impacts on the marketplace; instead of making things clear, it makes it more confusing. I think we need to stop using neutral language and speak in straighter terms. So when you agree to something, you actually get what you agreed to in the first place.

Josh Homme

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

Building places that are worth living in and worth caring about require a certain attention to detail, and of a particular kind of detail that we have forgotten how to design and assemble. And that involves the relationship of the buildings to each other, the relationship of the buildings to the public space, which in America, comes mostly in the form of the street. Because it's only the exceptional places in America that have the village square or the New England green. You know. The street is mostly the public realm of America. And we have to design these things so that they reward us.

James Howard Kunstler

In all things and in all ways, choice impacts virtually every element of our life. It bears repeating that even those things which seem out of reach of our choice are governed by how we choose to perceive them.

Mary Anne Radmacher

As the world's "most dynamic" cities seek to manage their own urban growth, American state and local officials have much to offer. Our mayors can share their experiences in urban design, clean energy projects, Smart Grids, codes for energy efficient buildings, transportation safety, and innovative environmental solutions.

Robert Hormats

Excess consumption doesn't make people happy. We can continue to provide for our needs, but we can't continue the endless pursuit of ever more consumer goods. There is no energy source that can provide enough consumer goods to meet our human and emotional needs; there never has been, and that's why it's been such a fruitless pursuit.

Tim DeChristopher

I would like to help people have honest and constructive conversations about energy. We need to understand how much energy our modern lifestyles use, decide how much energy we would like to use in the future, and choose where we will get that energy from.

David J. C. MacKay

We shouldn't just look at new buildings but at existing stock building because that's an even greater problem than the new buildings being built. The renovation of existing buildings and making them green is just as important as designing new green buildings.

Ken Yeang

Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class-involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing-are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.

Maurice Strong

We really need to kick the carbon habit and stop making our energy from burning things. Climate change is also really important. You can wreck one rainforest then move, drain one area of resources and move onto another, but climate change is global.

David Attenborough

Far from being a drag on growth, making our energy sources more sustainable, our energy consumption more efficient, and our economy more resilient to energy price shocks - those things are a vital part of the growth and wealth that we need

David Cameron

We all want things that are not necessarily essential, but we always choose those actions which we think will best improve the situation from our viewpoint. This means that the ideas that men hold determine their choice of actions. This means that the most important thing in the world is ideas.

Percy L. Greaves, Jr.

A Quote by Alex Steffen

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