These are great times for optimism. You may feel insecure about the immediate economic future; the free fall on the stock exchanges may threaten your pension plans. Yet your future, our future, has never been brighter. Let me explain.

In the past 14 years, since the beginning of Ode magazine, the global community has made many strives forward. We identified Muhammad Yunus and his work with microcredit as the best way to fight poverty long before he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. We studied how agricultural chemicals aren’t needed to produce food for the world population. Now, renewable energy economy is much closer than oil companies would have us believe.

Yet during all this time, many inspiring possible solutions that would greatly benefit humankind have faced the same challenge: To find a place in a financial system mostly, if not totally, focused on making money. In the past decade, even the exchange between doctors and patients has been measured monetarily. Efficiency has its place, and capitalism is a great system to facilitate human interaction. But a visitor from space would recognize that we’ve profoundly confused means and ends. As the Dutch poster I once saw said: “Human beings weren’t created to keep the economy going.”

So here’s the good news. That economic system, the Anglo-American type of capitalism, has come to an end. The world of turning profits with those dollars, disconnected from the fabric of life, has come to an end. As economist Noreena Hertz argues, this doesn’t at all mean the end of capitalism, nor should it mean that. Different varieties of capitalism have previously struck a balance between the economic system and human needs. But somehow, the most aggressive variety, pushed by the money markets in New York and London, became the dominant one.

So this crisis brings a great opportunity. It allows us to revisit the order of priorities. The emergence of sustainable finance will bring with it many of the solutions for a healthier and greener world.

Jurriaan Kamp is the founder and editor of Ode Magazine, the magazine for intelligent optimists.