The value of regular reminders

Each year, I start off the students in my building systems class with a TED talk by Alex Steffen about the opportunities for our urban areas over the next forty years.  It is always a great reminder to me that we know what needs to be done, and simply need to make sure that our economy and our priorities match our goals.  If we want nine to ten billion people to live on a planet that can support their needs, then we cannot have our cities of the future building on our cities of the present.  They must improve upon them.  Even in our own country, we have much on which we can improve.  The following chart shows the energy required to provide the average American quality of life compared with the rest of the world, and with other developed countries that have the same or higher quality of life.

Alex Steffen offers context for the solution.