Stories by Donella H. Meadows
is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College.
Meadows writes: "Politicians and economists look at the latest GDP reports to see how their nations are doing. I look at the IMR -- the infant mortality rate -- reports."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Last year, 1998, broke the global temperature record by almost a half degree Fahrenheit, which in climate terms is a huge leap. If the economy was changing so rapidly, Washington would do something about it..."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "In 1949 a small book was published shortly after its author, Aldo Leopold, died of a heart attack while fighting a forest fire near his homestead in rural Wisconsin. The book was a collection of his nature writings, crotchety writings, lyrical writings, praise for nature and manifestos for people from a man who spent his life in some of the wildest parts of America."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Here's one small thing anyone can do to make the world better: don't buy Coke. Don't buy soft drinks, period. How would that improve the world? Let me count the ways...."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "We know perfectly well what has gone wrong with our government: politicians no longer believe they are beholden to the people; they are beholden to people with money."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "They led her off to the aggressive skis, the aggressive boots, the aggressive bindings. These are made of supermetals and superplastics and superfabrics, bonded in layers with superglues. 'Imagine all the toxics,' I thought. 'And that layered stuff can never be recycled. And it will last in a landfill for a million years.' I must have been the only person in the store with such thoughts."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "I don't want to tell about the frogs. I don't even want to think about the frogs. The story is so complex and uncertain and sad. But, you know, there may be no more important story unfolding in the world today, important not only for the frogs, but also for us."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Together the world's 225 billionaires are worth $1 trillion, equal to the annual incomes of just under half (2.7 billion) of the global population... Statistics like these make me mad twice over. My heart gets mad at the gross inequity they convey. My mind gets mad at the glaring error of equating wealth with income. Surely the people who put out these numbers know better."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "This month, the Center for a New American Dream is running an e-mail discussion about commercialism in our lives. I have never seen such a hopping-mad bunch of messages. Rather than persuading us, the advertising industry seems to be infuriating us."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "I keep running into scary Y2K discussions. I suppose that's because they're happening more frequently and will continue to do so right up to December 31, 1999, when the year 2000 (Y2K) computer bug will kick in and End The World As We Know It."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Recent DNA tests say that Thomas Jefferson fathered a son by his slave mistress, Sally Hemings. As for me, my heart goes out to Tom. I've believed the Sally Hemings story all along. It hasn't stopped me from being an ardent admirer of Jefferson."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "The famous candidacy of Fred Tuttle for U.S. Senate may have begun as a joke, but it ended as an enlightening contrast to politics as usual."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "In the din of canned political phrases, stump speeches and angry ads, I keep waiting for some small part of the democratic discourse to address the issues I care about. I keep waiting for some politician to give even slightly honest-sounding answers to the questions I most want to ask."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "If you're disgusted by the whole sordid Washington drama; if you dread the thought of more testimony and more lascivious details; if you're sickened by sanctimonious lectures from known adulterers claiming to be shocked by adultery; if you wonder how the Constitution could have been brought so low; and if you nevertheless do not vote -- well, you've thrown away the only way to complain they will ever notice. Think of the long-term implications. Go vote."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "'I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees.' Children and environmentalists can recite that Dr. Seuss classic by heart. They would be furious if they could see what an alert reader just sent me."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "This year is the 200th anniversary of a small pamphlet that people are still arguing about. In 1798 the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus said forcefully that the human population tends to grow to the point where it impoverishes itself and starves... A new publication by the Worldwatch Institute is full of facts that show Malthus to be not dead and not wrong -- but maybe not right either."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "There's a small upside to the big downside of the global financial implosion. We get to be amused by theories about why it is happening."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Once again I stopped listening to the news this week. Not because I don't want to hear someone being grilled about his sex life, though I don't. Not because I'm a fan of Mr. Clinton, which I'm not. No, I ducked the news because I felt that something immensely unfair was happening, and I couldn't bring myself to participate."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Public relations people have a funny way of arguing. You say something, and they answer with a change of subject. It's like a tennis game in which you hit a ball over the net and your opponent hits a different ball back. Confusing. Unfair. Not much of a game."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "The more I hear about electricity restructuring, the more skeptical I get. This is an enormous change in a vital service, driven not by the public but by a few people who expect to profit. What seems to be in it for us? Avalanches of advertising, companies swallowing each other up, prices dropping, then rising, while services erode, complex rate structures, distant management and fraud."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "More air conditioners means more electricity use, which means, to the extent that Texas power plants burn oil, gas, or coal, the president's "solution" to the heat problem will make future heat problems worse."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "I've known about the Tongass National Forest for years. To anyone who follows environmental news, it's legendary. America's last temperate rainforest. Eagles and wolves and grizzlies. Massive clearcuts, crooked deals with pulp companies. The federal forest that loses more taxpayer money than any other."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: " What would it have meant if President Clinton had, as he was urged to do, "taken responsibility" for slavery while he was in Africa. What does it mean when a crazed Northern Ireland splinter group eagerly "takes responsibility" for blowing innocent civilians to smithereens? What does the president mean when he says he takes responsibility for lying repeatedly about a mindless sexual dalliance?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Science journals report that each of the first five months of 1998 was the warmest in recorded history. Now that's news. But it didn't make the news. The Texas heat wave made the news, but without context. How is it related to those five months of record-breaking temperature, to fossil-fuel burning, to global warming?"
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "It's not a combination I would ever have expected to see -- Monsanto and the Grameen Bank. A huge corporation, one-time maker of some of the most pernicious chemicals ever to hit the environment, in partnership with a bank for the poorest of the poor."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Resilience is the ability of a system to absorb blows, repair itself, weather hard times, adapt, adjust, evolve.... Resilience has its costs, which sane people are willing to pay, because doing so is a matter of survival."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Having lived with an amusing variety of people over more than two decades, I have learned that I rank at about the 80th percentile on the personal neatness scale."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "The growing number of endangered species, the fires burning out of control in Indonesia and Mexico and Florida, the changing climate. Population growth is not the single cause of any of these happenings. But it is an inexorable driving factor behind all of them."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "The instability of Nigeria, the bankruptcy of Indonesia ... the growing number of endangered species, the fires burning out of control in Indonesia, Mexico and Florida, the changing climate. Population growth is not the single cause of any of these happenings. But it is an inexorable driving factor behind all of them."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "So now I'm taking Y2K seriously. I don't plan to spend December 1999 panicking and hoarding (which, if everyone did it, would create a Y2K problem even if the computers work fine). I'm just going to plant more potatoes and squash and dry beans than usual and lay in extra firewood."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "A rider is a last-minute amendment to one of those necessary bills, usually slipped into the 154th paragraph or so where no one will notice. The rider will have nothing to do with the bill. ... It will do a major favor at public expense to some campaign contributor somewhere, but the damage will be finely calibrated to look insignificant relative to the billion-dollar bill it's riding on."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "From around the world, and especially from India and Pakistan, I am reminded that plenty of people understand one simple fact. You cannot gain security by making your enemy feel insecure."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "The overwhelming response, especially impressive because there was no big money behind it, shows that people want 'organic' to mean more than pesticide-free. At a minimum it should mean food we trust, un-meddled-with, healthy to eat, raised in an environment healthy to live in."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Candy-bar makers, faced with a worldwide shortage of both chocolate and rainforest, have come to a revolutionary decision: forget plantations; go back to production by small farmers raising mixed crops under native forest. That's the most intelligent industry decision I've heard in a while."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Gas station counters are always littered with strange products. I wouldn't have given this one a second thought, if I hadn't just been talking about the carrying capacity of the earth. 'Can you give a lecture to my students on the carrying capacity of the earth?' my colleague had asked. 'You know that topic so well, you won't even have to think about it.' Right."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Well here's a howdy-do. TV station in Florida prepares hard-hitting series questioning safety of grocery-store milk. Large biotech company threatens station with libel suit. Station cancels broadcast, orders reporters to rewrite series. Reporters refuse. Station fires reporters. Reporters sue station."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "On average, 65 cents out of every dollar you spend for food at the supermarket go for packaging, delivery and marketing. Thirty cents go to chemical companies that make fertilizers, pesticides and genetically altered organisms. That leaves five cents for the farmer. If you wonder why farms are failing (over 20,000 a year go under in the U.S.), that's why."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "A booklet called 'Tax Shift,' which handily arrived on my desk just before April 15, tells how we could replace existing taxes and improve both the economy and the environment in the process. As the title 'Tax Shift' indicates, this is not a tract about having no government and no taxes. It accepts that we have to tax SOMETHING and makes an impeccable economic argument for taxing not goods, such as income or capital. but bads, such as tobacco or alcohol or -- this is the main point -- resource use."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "Given our history, our beneficent self-image, and the fact that we are nearly all descendents of immigrants, Americans get emotional about immigration. So the Sierra Club is in trouble."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
Meadows writes: "When I got off the plane in Amsterdam last Saturday, I walked across the terminal to a clean, efficient train system that could take me to anywhere in Europe ... Why don't we have a rail system like that? Two main reasons, I'd guess. The auto and oil industries are against it. And we won't let ourselves think of paying for it the way the Dutch do -- partly through ticket sales, but largely through (gasp!) taxes."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000, Source: AlterNet
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