By Jim Schley
~This eulogy for Dana appeared in Northern Woodlands magazine.~
On February 20, Donella (“Dana”) Meadows died of bacterial meningitis. For almost thirty years, Dana had taught environmental studies at Dartmouth College. I met her in an undergraduate course on Ethics and Environmental Policy, a class that was one of the watershed experiences of my life. No individual had greater impact than Dana Meadows on the choices I’ve made, professionally and personally, in the more than two decades since.
MacArthur Fellow, Pew Scholar, nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, co-founder of land trusts, nonprofits, and intentional communities, the range of her engagements was wide. But most impressive was not just her worldliness but a remarkable “rootedness” in this specific place, the Connecticut River valley. For twenty-seven years, she lived on a small, communal, organic farm in Plainfield, New Hampshire, only last year moving across the river to Cobb Hill, an eco-village with two dozen families that hosts an organic farm and eventually will be home of the Sustainability Institute, a “think-do tank” (that’s Dana’s phrase) promoting ecological remedies for planetary problems.
As part of a team of young M.I.T. graduate students working with cutting-edge gear and techniques, Dana arrived with a brilliant blaze on the world’s stage. She was principle author of The Limits to Growth, my generation’s Silent Spring. Published in 1971, this book audaciously utilized computer modeling to project exhaustion of the world’s natural resources and life-support systems if population, industrial development, and energy use continue to rise unabated. These days, when every business and most homes in America use computers on a daily basis, computer modeling is as familiar as indoor plumbing. And the book’s assertion that living organisms, even entire eco-systems, are subject to limitations and can “crash” if certain thresholds are overshot is now broadly accepted in theory. Likewise, the reality of limits is constantly being confirmed empirically by people working on diverse scales, from household gardeners and foresters managing woodlands to meteorologists tracking long-term climate change.
But The Limits to Growth was met upon publication with outrage. In a society that equates “growth” with economic vitality, the idea that survival depends upon conservation, discipline, and moderation seemed like sacrilege. Yet ultimately the book sold nine million copies, was translated into twenty-eight languages, and was followed in 1992 by a sequel, Beyond the Limits. Clearly its assertions have been taken to heart by many, ardent environmentalists as well as people to whom the idea of limits simply makes sense.
By her own description, Dana was “an opinionated columnist, perpetual fund-raiser, fanatic gardener, opera lover, baker, farmer, teacher, and global gadfly.” She ought to have added “bell ringer” — longtime member of a bell choir, she was also a kind of international town crier, thinking locally and acting globally. In her syndicated column “The Global Citizen,” she’d consider the difficulties of shopping conscientiously, the destructiveness of World Bank policies, or the impacts of incremental shifts in atmospheric temperature. She was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and one of the friendliest. In her case, the alleged split between the Arts and Sciences was meaningless.
Dana made the woods, rivers, and pastures of New England her home, while responding to a calling from the earth as a whole. Her death leaves a vast amount of work to do. The challenge now falls to the rest of us to labor on with Dana’s fierce concentration and uncanny good humor.
Jim Schley was one of Donella Meadows’s students and Dartmouth and later one of her editors at the book publisher Chelsea Green. He is a teacher, writer, and book editor who lives in central Vermont.
