Worldchanging

File:Worldchanging.jpg

Worldchanging.com screenshot (November 2006)

Worldchanging is an American non-profit online magazine and blog about sustainability and social innovation.

The site has earned positive reviews (and won several awards and honors) and was rated the second largest sustainability site on the web by Nielsen Online in 2008.

Worldchanging is also the title of a book by the same editors, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, a survey of best-practice solutions in sustainability and social innovation. The compendium was updated in 2011 with Steffen as the author, Bill McKibben's Introduction, Van Jones Forward, and Sagmeister Inc. designer in Worldchanging, Revised and Updated Edition: A User's Guide for the 21st Century.

History and Organization

Worldchanging was launched in October, 2003 in San Francisco by Alex Steffen and Jamais Cascio, with a core of initial contributors, many of whom were part of the Viridian Design Movement, and had intellectual ties to the Whole Earth Catalog. In 2005, Worldchanging moved its offices to Seattle, Washington. In early 2006, Cascio split off to form the more explicitly futurist site Open the Future and Worldchanging became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation with an explicitly "solutions-based journalism" mission.

Worldchanging is now headquartered in Seattle and led editorially by Alex Steffen, the executive editor, with managing editor Amanda Reed, contributing editors include Jeremy Faludi and Sarah Rich, among others. It relies extensively on an international network of writers and correspondents, see list below.

Worldchanging is overseen by a board of directors, lead by Worldchanging's chairman, the environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky. Worldchanging is supported by a mixture of grants, book sales, speaker fees and reader donations.

On November 29, 2010, Worldchanging announced it would shut down.

Content

Worldchanging practices "solutions-based journalism," that is, the explicit goal of its work is to highlight possible solutions to what the editorial team sees as the planet's most pressing problems, rather than to spread news of those problems or critiques of their causes. Executive editor Alex Steffen was quoted in the Guardian explaining the value of this approach by saying "Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in western popular culture, but in reality, our cynicism advances the desires of the powerful: cynicism is obedience."

In its manifesto, Worldchanging declares its mission this way:

"Worldchanging is a solutions-based online magazine that works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together. Informed by that premise, we do our best to bring you the most important and innovative new tools, models and ideas for building a bright green future. We don't do negative reviews – why waste your time with what doesn't work? We don't offer critiques or exposes, except to the extent that such information may be necessary for the general reader to apprehend the usefulness of a particular tool or resource. We don't generally offer links to resources which are about problems and not solutions, unless the resource is so insightful that its very existence is a step towards a solution. We pay special attention to tools, ideas and models that may have been overlooked in the mass media. We make a point of showing ways in which seemingly unconnected resources link together to form a toolkit for changing the world.

Worldchanging publishes a mix of essays and interviews; shorter original reviews, letters from the field (conference reports, lab visits, notes from correspondents' travels) and think-pieces; and blog posts "highlighting the best coverage of new ideas and innovations from around the Web." From time to time, the site posts radio-style podcasts and online videos as well.

Worldchanging's content is divided in to seven sections: stuff, shelter, cities, community, business, politics, and planet. This taxonomy is designed to parse solutions based on their proximity to the reader, so that on one extreme Stuff is mostly about innovations in product design, food, clothing, and other objects used directly by individual people, while on the other extreme Planet encompasses global environmental and social issues, scientific advances and new thinking about the future of humanity.

Worldchanging also maintains a network of local blogs in several U.S. cities and Canada. The organization offers a newsletter as well, designed to serve more occasional readers, as well as perhaps more usual social networking tools, like a Facebook group.

Bright Green Approach

Critical to Worldchanging's editorial stance is the concept of bright green environmentalism. Bright green environmentalism aims for a sustainably prosperous society that relies on new technology and improved design to live within the planet's ecological limits while increasing the potential for economic growth, human social development and individual quality of life.

Like many other bright green environmentalists, the Worldchanging community expresses the belief that radical changes are needed in the economic and political operation of society in order to make it sustainable, but that better designs, new technologies and more widely distributed social innovations are the means to make those changes-- and that we can neither shop nor protest our way to sustainability. They tend to focus extensively on the idea that through a combination of well-built compact communities, clean energy, green building, new technologies and sustainable living practices, quality of life can actually be improved even while ecological footprints shrink. "One-planet living" is a frequently heard buzz-phrase. As Ross Robertson writes, "[B]right green environmentalism is less about the problems and limitations we need to overcome than the “tools, models, and ideas” that already exist for overcoming them. It forgoes the bleakness of protest and dissent for the energizing confidence of constructive solutions.".

The term "bright green" has been used with increased frequency in the media. For more on the differences between light green, dark green and bright green movements, see the bright green environmentalism entry.

Critical Reception, Audience and Impact

Wired columnist Bruce Sterling called Worldchanging "the most important website on the planet," and architect Richard Meier named it as his favorite site and praised it as "a wealth of information on sustainability".

It has won or been nominated for the following awards and prizes:

• 2005, won the Utne Independent Press Award.
• 2006, finalist for a Webby for Best Blog.
• 2007, finalist for a Webby for Best Magazine, as well as for Bloggie awards for Best Group Weblog and Best Writing for a Weblog; won the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature for its book; won Organic Design Award. Prix Ars Electronica nominee.
• 2008, named a Webby Official Honoree.

According to BlogPulse, Worldchanging was the 135th most cited blog in the world in July 2008 In 2008, Nielsen rated it the second leading sustainability site in the world, after Treehugger.com, while Time Magazine named it one of the world's top 15 environmental websites.

In interviews, Worldchanging staff have described their readers as young, highly-educated and concentrated in green business, the design professions, NGOs, media organizations and academia. More than a third of these readers live outside North America, particularly in the U.K., the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand. The site has a particularly strong following in Canada, and maintains a blog devoted especially to Canadian ideas and innovations.

Media

Worldchanging and its ideas have been covered in stories in the New York Times and New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, Time magazine, Der Spiegel, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Wired, US News and World Report, USA Today, the L.A. Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times, Le Monde, the Independent, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Fast Company, SEED, ID, Dwell, ReadyMade, the Associated Press, the New York Review of Books, the International Herald Tribune, the Globe and Mail, the New Statesman, the Nation, New Scientist, Sierra magazine, Outside, Audubon, and the Sun.

Worldchanging is the subject of a CNN documentary and editors have appeared on the Today Show, LinkTV and several CBC television programs. Radio includes the CBC's the Current, the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, NPR's Living on Earth, Open Source and Morning Edition programs, as well as on Earth & Sky, Marketplace and many local NPR affiliate and talk radio programs.

Worldchanging (book)

In November 2006, Worldchanging published a survey of global innovation, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century with a foreword by Al Gore, design by Stefan Sagmeister and an introduction by Bruce Sterling. It has received praise and was a winner of the Green Prize for sustainable literature, and is now seeing translation into French (under the title Change Le Monde), German and several other languages. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., the publisher of the hardcover edition, listed it among their 50 best selling titles in July 2008. The book was mentioned by BusinessWeek as one of the "Best Innovation and Design Books for 2006" and received positive comments:

The staff plans to eventually release the book as a free Creative Commons-licensed online resource. On October 2008, they announced their plans to launch a new book, as well as putting out a second edition of their first book.

Contributors and Correspondents

Worldchanging is run by a core team of 8, and relies extensively on an international network of writers and correspondents:

• Uleshka Asher
• Alan Atkisson
• Erica C. Barnett
• Nicole-Anne Boyer
• Stewart Brand
• David Brin
• Blaine Brownell
• Jamais Cascio
• Dawn Danby
• Regine Debatty
• Eric de Place
• Alan Durning
• Jeremy Faludi
• Gil Friend
• Daniel Flahiff
• Emily Gertz
• Joy Green
• Jonathan Greenblatt
• Rohit Gupta
• James E. Hansen
• Zaid Hassan
• Paul Hawken
• Denis Hayes
• Mara Hvistendahl
• Warren Karlenzig
• Rob Katz
• Brandon Keim
• Sanjay Khanna
• Micki Krimmel
• Sarah Kuck
• Katie Kurts
• Michael LaFond
• Jennifer Leonard
• Jon Lebkowsky
• Hana Loftus
• Amory Lovins
• Mindy Lubber
• Joel Makower
• Geoff Manaugh
• Hassan Masum
• Ed Mazria
• Patrick Mazza
• Bill McDonough
• Bill McKibben
• Dina Mehta
• Mike Millikin
• Chad Monfreda
• Craig Neilson
• Taran Rampersad
• Sarah Rich
• Patrick Rollens
• Ted Rose
• Karl Schroeder
• Cameron Sinclair
• Bruce Sterling
• Justus Stewart
• Charles Stross
• Mark Tovey
• John Thackara
• Matthew Waxman
• Terry Tempest Williams
• Clark Williams-Derry
• David Zaks
• Andrew Zolli
• Ethan Zuckerman
• Seth Zuckerman

Public Speaking

In addition to its editorial work, Worldchanging frequently presents its ideas in speeches and other public appearances, especially by editor Alex Steffen and contributing editors Sarah Rich and Jeremy Faludi. From time to time, it takes on mission-related consulting work.

Steffen does most of the organization's public appearances, and has spoken at TED, Poptech and Design Indaba He is represented by the Lavin Agency.

External links

• Worldchanging.com
• video of Alex Steffen's talk at the TED conference
• Dicum, Gregory (2006). Green Blogs: The Green revolution moves online. San Francisco Chronicle
• Steffen, Alex Nikolai (2006). The Next Green Revolution: How technology is leading environmentalism out of the anti-business, anti-consumer wilderness. Wired Magazine
• profile on Worldchanging in the New York Times Magazine
• A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century — WIE magazine
• "Go Bright Green" -- article in the Guardian
• Interview in Grist.org