Political Optimism?
April 9, 2010

Beyond your mother’s love for her garden or your best friend’s righteous indignation about the environment, Alex Steffen keeps cultivating a whole lot of love for the future of urban sustainability.

His drive to keep compassion in tandem with environmental conversation and innovation runs far as co-founder and executive editor of Seattle-based WorldChanging—a non-profit recently ranked as the second-largest sustainability website in the world.

In a new interview for The Sun he stated, “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.”

Stories covered by WorldChanging fall onto very different trajectories—such as one detailing the efforts of a panel of over 1,000 young people across the world to negotiate climate policy using Google Wave. Another only needs to be mentioned by name, “How Condoms Could Save The Forests,” to illustrate how the online magazine is turning a slant towards constructive hope into environmental journalism.

How ’bout that? Love and technology it seems, can actually save the world.

Photo Credit: Isolano / Creative Commons