UCLA’s “Grand Challenges” Cheerfully Takes on the Tough Realities Facing Sustainability

Optimists out there will respond well to what UCLA is doing out here in Southern California with its Grand Challenges,  as explained in the very well-made videos linked above.

Not to split hairs, but I think of myself as a meliorist, rather than an optimist.  I’m not confident that things are going to turn out well here on planet Earth, but I know for a fact that you and I can make a difference for the better.

From Wikipedia: 

Meliorism is an idea … (that holds) that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned natural one. Meliorism, as a conception of the person and society, is at the foundation of contemporary liberal democracy and human rights and is a basic component of liberalism.^[1]

Anyone who disbelieves in the existence of meliorism isn’t really paying attention to the world around him.  The issue, it seems to me, is getting more people to embrace it in their lives.