Stories by Donella H. Meadows
is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College.
"I've been bewailing the short-term, sound-bite, soul-less way in which the U.S. media greeted the turn of the millennium. (You know -- lists of the top ten athletes of the century, ads for the soft drink of the new millennium.) Then in from the Internet came welcome news of intelligent life elsewhere on earth."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"What do the Internet, Alcoholics Anonymous and VISA International, the organization that brings us the VISA card, all have in common? They are all "chaordic" organizations -- self-organizing and self-governing, with no glittering center of power, no central headquarters and no one owns any of them."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"When, within one short, dark month, you have to lift, focus on, and decide the future of every piece of stuff you have accumulated, you get a visceral sense of the material excess of the American lifestyle. "
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"When the cameramen at the WTO protests can choose between activists talking earnestly about corporate abuses or delinquents breaking windows on the street, what will appear on the nightly news?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"The power brokers of the World Trade Organization are scared, and they should be. If the media makes any serious effort to transmit the views of the myriad demonstrators who will confront the WTO in Seattle, those power brokers will gain no public support."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Whether we grow our own or buy them in a shop, should we care whether our flowers carry pesticide residues or genetically modified DNA? Does it make sense to buy or grow organic flowers?
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Almost thirty years ago I returned from a long stay in India with my mind, body, and senses full of dust and color, peace and violence, holiness and crassness, all the contradictions of a land so different from my own. The messy, mind-boggling, raw REALITY of India receded into memories -- until last week when I got an e-mail message from my friend Vicki Robin, just back from her first trip to India."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"I'd like to ask Al Gore a question: What happened to your environmental views? In the past seven years we have seen only tepid environmental measures from you and your president. Back-pedaling. Compromise. Window-dressing. Why?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
If gene-modified foods cause problems, we Americans will be the first to find out. Now that the Europeans and Japanese are refusing to eat these Frankenfoods, they are being dumped almost exclusively on the American market.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
A new book called "Believing Cassandra" asks an important question: What if you believe the modern prophets who say the climate is changing, the ecosystems are disappearing, the human enterprise is unsustainable and heading for disaster?
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"The United Nations decided to pick an arbitrary date -- October 12 -- and declare it the Day of Six Billion, when the Earth's population hit that astounding number. But what kind of event should this be? A day of repentance? A celebration?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
This is time of year when it is decided how your and my tax dollars get spent, supposedly for our public welfare, but far too often for the private welfare of a few powerful people and corporations who are not only raiding the public treasury, but, worse, eating into the nation's environmental and natural wealth.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
The folks who bring us gene-spliced soybeans, corn, potatoes, and other foods like to make a point of the U.S. government's approval of their products. The feds OK'd it. That must mean biotech foods are safe, right?
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"For decades, scientists have been telling us with clarity and urgency that the earth cannot sustain our prolonged tampering. Short of yelling and screaming, which scientists are trained not to do, I don't see how these august people could be more clear."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
What do the bicycle, the clothesline, the ceiling fan, the condom, the public library, Pad Thai and the ladybug all have in common? Their kindness to the earth and to human health puts them at the top of the "Seven Sustainable Wonders of the World" list.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
In town drought may be a nuisance; you can't wash your car or water your lawn. In the country your livelihood and food supply and consciousness are intertwined with the land, and drought is sheer agony. Months and months of agony, as clouds roll in, thunderstorms play around us, and nothing falls from the sky.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Singapore, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, United States, Norway. Those are the world's five top nations, in descending order, in -- well, what category would you guess?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"A congressional rider is a small parasite hooked onto a big bill. It would never pass on its own, but maybe, if no one notices, if the president wants the money badly enough, if there's a back-room deal, maybe it can ride through on a must-pass funding measure."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"The claim that we need genetic engineering to feed the hungry must be based on two assumptions: first, that more food will actually go to hungry people, and second, that genetic engineering is the only way to raise more food. Both assumptions are false."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Electrolux vacuum cleaner bags have always been pricey, but they recently jacked them up to $1.25 each. I called my local distributor to ask why the steep rise. They're new improved bags, he pointed out. When I got around to reading the label, I discovered that they're new alright... but are the new, dangerous chemicals really an improvement?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"What does it mean to forest management, to selective harvesting, to clear-cutting? What does it mean when acid rain falls, when drought comes, when herbicide is sprayed, when we try to fight off tree diseases? What does it mean to our cultural notion that the world runs on competition, not cooperation? Are we biased toward seeing only collections of individuals rather than interconnected systems? Have we literally been failing to see the forest for the trees?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"I guess it's clear that there's still some raider rooster in us, some instinct to take advantage of the weak, considerable pleasure in power. On the other hand, I've never seen one strong chicken try to stop another from violence, or one group of chickens organize shelter and food for another."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"'Our city is considering cluster zoning. Is this a good idea or isn't it?' my friend asked me the other day. I think clustering is a good idea -- I'm about to live in a housing cluster myself. But, like many good ideas, it's easier to say than do."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
At the University of Wisconsin's program on Climate, People and Environment Dr. Jonathan Foley makes computer models to study what might happen if the human economy continues to emit greenhouse gases. Like hundreds of other climate scientists, he is deeply worried about global warming. Unlike most scientists I know, he carries that worry into his personal life.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Why do we pay so little to the farmers who feed us? How can they survive with their demeaning wages? And why do they put up with it and keep feeding us?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Driving home last night I heard a snatch of radio discussion about whether we're paying the president enough. Someone suggested that we link his salary to the growth rate of the economy. That made me pound the steering wheel. 'No, you idiot!' I yelled at the radio. 'The president doesn't make the economy grow! Even if he did, economic growth is a lousy measure of how well off we are!'"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Americans have been inundated with (often contradictory) advice about greener ways to live. To the rescue, at last, comes a book called The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices. Here are the top things the book says consumers can do to help the environment..."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"The Grand Banks of Newfoundland have been fished in by humans for over a thousand years -- until 1992, when their destruction was completed by overzealous trawlers and factory boats. The exact same thing almost happened to the Barents Sea -- except that the Norweigan government stepped in to stop the extinctions."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Energy guru Amory Lovins has been seeing farther and farther into the energy future. Recently, Lovins has introduced a design for the Hypercar -- safe as a Volvo, peppy as a Porsche, running 100 or 200 miles per gallon. But that's just a small step towards his real dream -- the hydrogen-powered car that would provide cheap, clean transportation and even replace our coal and nuclear power plants as a source of household energy."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Aha! We knew it!" a number of conservative columnists have been crowing lately. "Greenhouse, schmeenhouse, go right on driving those sports utility vehicles." The cause of their excitement is an article published in Science magazine, one of the most prestigious places a scientific article can be published, claiming that the North American continent is a huge carbon sink.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Carl Safina takes you out in the boats with commercial fleets. He takes you to Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, where a large fraction of the world's catch ends up. He takes you to national and international meetings, where your jaw drops at the utter ineptness of fishing regulatory bodies. Best of all, Safina takes you into the astounding life of the fish."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Travel around America or look at the statistics. Either way you find the same thing: A small minority of Americans are thriving. On paper anyway. For the moment."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Overshadowed by the agony of Kosovo, outshouted by the Dow crossing ten thousand, a surprising news item appeared on page 6 or 15 or so of most American newspapers last week. Social Security has received a stay of execution. Instead of going into the red in 2032, it may survive till 2040 or 2050. Medicare, once expected to tank in 2006, will apparently last till 2012.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Surprised citizens are flooding Congress with calls asking how this Kosovo mess came about and why we're involved in it. I feel a surge of annoyance at the American people for paying so little attention to the world, followed by a surge of annoyance at the American media for informing us so well about trivial things and so poorly about crucial things. Then comes a wave of understanding toward my fellow citizens. If I hadn't spent much of my foolish youth in Yugoslavia, I wouldn't know its history either. I wouldn't be overwhelmed with grief as such a beautiful place descends into barbarism.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Genetic engineering is nothing new. People have been messing with genes since the first farmers selected the biggest wild grass seeds and began to breed what we now call grain.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Poor Monsanto. To my knowledge only one other company has managed to be so hated that its CEO has been hit in the face by a cream pie."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
How could we make our cities more like Oslo, Norway and less like land-gulping, energy-intensive, half-empty St. Louis? There is a long list of things we could do. Eben Fodor, in his new book "Better Not Bigger" (the most useful piece of writing on sprawl control I've seen) organizes them under two categories: taking the foot off the accelerator and applying the brake.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"Don't believe the myth that all growth is good. Instead, ask the hard questions. Since we can't grow forever, where should we stop?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
"During previous outbreaks of concern about America's spreading cities it was 'strip development' or 'slurbs' or simply 'the growth problem.' This time around the hot term is 'sprawl' -- and we aren't even close to effectively controlling it."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "For a whole year I steered clear of Monica madness. I knew what was happening, of course -- who didn't? But I watched no broadcasts, read no articles, shut my ears, covered my eyes. Then on the final Saturday I got hooked by the battle of the snippets."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
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