Like most of us, perhaps, I know that the world is going to hell in a hand basket.  Pick your poison --  here are two of my recent  'favorites':

No seafood left by 2048 -- we over-fished the oceans! Yay humans!

All these severe earthquakes might be more severe because of global warming.

Also, like most of us, I had no idea what to do about it. So I was blown away by Valerie Casey's keynote here at SXSW Interactive.

A former exec at IDEO and Frog Design, Ms. Casey started The Designers Accord , a group of designers focused on sustainability and social change.  Her talk was really simple but moving.  The outline of it:

-- The world is going to hell in a hand basket.

-- The interactive community ( egocentric me, I didn't know I was a member of a community . . . there you go ) has done boo to help with these problems.  We lag product designers, urban planners, architects, you name it. 

-- These big 'intractable' problems are tough to solve because they are systems problems. By systems, I mean bunch of interdependent actors, and behaviors, with associated outcomes.

-- No other design discipline knows more about systems and systems design than interactive designers.  Especially if you include gaming and social as part of interactive.

-- So get out there and do something!

Email sent to Val Casey and Designers Accord.  Let me see if I can do something.