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Alex Steffen Profile picture
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13 Jan, 10 tweets, 3 min read
We could build new, low-car, zero-carbon, walkable, affordable, vibrant districts on brownfields, transit areas, sprawling parking lots and dead malls, everywhere, drop our climate impacts permanently—and do it *fast*.

Not being "able" to do so is a political choice—a wrong one. Image
More info on that picture:

See also: this shit is unbelievably do-able, right now.

See also: WTF are we doing building catastrophically dangerous places and infrastructure, in 2022, except for serving predatory delay?

Don't even get me talking about gas stations...
Doing things better is not even "innovative" anymore.

It's deeply evidenced by examples, data and results.

It HAS BEEN deeply evidenced by examples, data and results FOR A DECADE or more

Build compact housing, everywhere, as fast as possible.

Heck, just LET people build it.

See also: the housing crisis is a massive housing shortage.
Hands up if you would happily live in less space, without a car — if it meant a more affordable home, with lower energy costs, fewer climate emissions, more community, and a walkable safe neighborhood with green spaces for your kids to enjoy.

🙋‍♂️
See also:
alexsteffen.substack.com/p/ruggedize-yo…

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More from @AlexSteffen

Alex Steffen Profile picture
10 Jan
When it comes to the planetary crisis, the public good depends on protecting people from inaction by shattering barriers to action, speed is justice, and scale is inclusion.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/we-cannot-ac…
Most people are vastly more endangered by the worsening impacts of climate change, ecological collapse, systemic brittleness and societal instability than they are by the price tags of investments in action.

The poorer someone is, the younger, the more precarious their life, the worse these crisis impacts hurt them, and the more unfair they are.

Predatory delay is predatory precisely because it turns status quo profits into intergenerational injustice.

Read 7 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
10 Jan
This is as clear an articulation of the "orderly transition or apocalypse" frame you're likely to find:

"We solve the climate crisis together, or we risk everything."
More here:

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/when-it-gets…
And here:

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/an-orderly-t…
Read 4 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
9 Jan
Signing up for The Snap Forward — my newsletter about life in the discontinuity of the planetary crisis — is free.

Paying supporters of the newsletter also get my private podcast, which explores these topics more fully.

alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe
If you're interested in understanding our fast-changing world, this is for you.
You can also book me for consultations and keynote talks, here:

app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?o…
Read 4 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
9 Jan
This essay crystalized a reality I've been on the brink of imagining myself for a long time. Powerful to see it said clearly and in whole.

studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/superhistory…
"Specifically, modern AI is better understood as AT — 'Artificial Time' that can be prosthetically attached to human minds. And highly capable computing systems are best understood as existing in superhistory rather than embodying superintelligence."

BOOM.
[Brink of imagining is @GreatDismal's line]
Read 6 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
8 Jan
Being heavily invested, emotionally, in the idea that the planetary crisis means a total apocalypse — even the extinction of all humanity — is not only NOT a more realistic understanding of the world, it actually aids and abets those opposing rapid change.
alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet…
In brief,
See also,
alexsteffen.substack.com/p/predatory-de…
Read 4 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
7 Jan
"Being too far ahead is the same thing as being wrong," and being recognized as right, at the right time — but only in hindsight — is often the same thing as being broke.
95% of the job is learning, researching, pondering, exploring, weighing out the possibilities, until we arrive at an informed intuition about where things are moving — the other 95% is articulating our intuitions in ways that make clear sense to those who did none of that work.
It is so much easier to simply toss out provocations.

It's like Tom Sawyer getting the other kids to pay to paint the fence.
Read 4 tweets

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