Global Citizen Columns

Below are the Global Citizen columns Donella Meadows wrote between 1986 and her death in 2001. Click here to browse the articles as larger blurbs.

Global Citizen Columns by Date

1986

January 22: My Candidate for the Next President of the United States
May 29: Hands Across White River Junction
June 5: The Best Nations of the World
June 12: Good News in the East, Bad News in the West
June 19: Poverty Causes Population Growth Causes Poverty
June 26: The War Between the Eco-Freaks and the Techno-Twits
July 3: Super-Tractors, Super-Cows, Super-Farms
July 10: An Endangered Species Can Be Fun
July 17: All the White House is a Stage
July 24: Portugal’s Generation of Hope
July 31: Cory Aquino – A New Kind of Leader
August 7: We’re All Downwind from Seabrook
August 14: Tax Reform: More Questions than Answers
August 14: Beyond Divestment and Sanctions
August 28: Six Hungarians Discover America
September 4: A Farm That Thrives Without Chemicals
September 11: Winter Is Coming, and So Is a Recession
September 18: The Latest Jokes from Eastern Europe
September 25: Where Do All the Pesticides Go?
October 2: Regulating Pesticides – An Impossible Job
October 9: Everything in Nature Wants to Eat Apples
October 17: Can the World be Fed Without Pesticides
October 23: How to Get Along with Seabrook
October 30: Population Growth – The Last and the Next 35 Years
November 6: A Glimpse of Freedom for the World’s Hostages
November 13: How Much Abuse Can Mother Earth Take
November 20: Rotary Takes a Stand for the End of Polio
November 27: A Time of Death, a Time of Life
December 4: Why Would Anyone Want to Play Starpower
December 11: Nuclear Weapons After Reykjavik – Join the Debate
December 18: Folly in Iran, Folly in Nicaragua
December 25: Two Stories and a Whole Bunch of Morals

 

1987

January 1: We Loved Ronald Reagan So Much
January 8: A Neighborhood Controls Its Own Development
January 15: Good Environmental News From All Over
January 29: The Gift the Philippines Can Give the World
February 5: A Valentine for Karl
February 12: What Shall We Do About America?
February 19: When the Stock Market Goes Up and the Economy Doesn’t
February 26: Peru’s Young President Balances on the High Wire
March 5: Three Million Pounds of Food a Month
March 12: What Happens When the Bank Fails
March 19: Zwentendorf, A Nuclear Plant that Will Never Be Turned On
March 26: Creeping Degradation in a Viennese Park
April 2: Rambo Still Rules the White House
April 9: All the Nations Can’t Feed Themselves, but All the People Can Be Fed
April 16: Land Protection Is More than Champagne and Quiche
April 23: A Billion-Dollar Primer
April 30: Home, Home on the Loam
May 7: Hunger and Surplus Rise and Fall Together
May 14: Gary Hart — The Hound is Brother to the Fox
May 21: Two Approaches to Sewage Treatment and to the World
May 28: We Don’t Need to Squander Oil and Lives
June 4: We Don’t Need Leadership to Know Right From Wrong
June 11: Information on Energy America Can’t Count On
June 18: Every Goliath Has His David
June 25: Making New Worlds and Appreciating the Old One
July 2: Six Fallacies of Modern Agriculture
July 9: Ronald Reagan in the Shadow of Thomas Jefferson
July 16: E. B. White the Skeptic and Ollie North the True Believer
July 23: The Philippines After the Revolution — One Step at a Time
July 30: High-Tech Garbage Recycling Makes Jobs and Saves Money
August 8: A Historic International Agreement on Ozone
August 20: The Thinning of Turnips and the Right to Life
August 26: You Too Can Help Bring Back Quetzalcoatl
September 3: Ethnic Jokes People Tell About Themselves
September 3: Incinerator Blues, Part One: Do You Know Where Your Trash Is Tonight?
September 10: Incinerator Blues, Part Two: A Beginner’s Guide to Toxic Ash
September 17: Incinerator Blues, Part Three: Who Do You Trust?
September 24: Incinerator Blues, Part 4: Why Not Recycling?
October 1: Jozsef Discovers America
October 8: A Catalog for Eco-Consumers
October 15: The Ozone Agreement — Many Kinds of Heroes
October 22: Prophets of Depression are Without Honor in any Country
October 29: The Stock Market Is Not the Economy
November 5: A Nobel Peace Prize for Costa Rica
November 12: The Stock Market Crash — Layers of Causes
November 12: Bring Back the Fairness Doctrine
November 26: A Crack in the Mindset of Nuclear Madness
December 3: A State-of-the-Art Evacuation Plan
December 10: Welcome to the Evacuation Hearings
December 17: What Would the World Be if There Were No Hunger?
December 24: Lines in the Mind, Not in the World
December 31: Have You Got a Minute?

 

1988

January 7: Silent Spring and The Population Bomb — Can Books or Lives Make Any Difference?
January 14: Who Needs Florida, Anyway?
January 14: After the Treaty What Happens to the Bombs?
January 28: Call Off the Campaign, Our Minds are Made Up
February 4: A Week in the Nation’s Capital – Who Will Win?
February 11: What is This Thing Called Leadership?
February 18: Problems are Interconnected — And so are Solutions
February 25: Not More Simple, Not More Fair
March 3: Why Should We Be Glad When the GNP Goes Up?
March 10: The Academics Meet the Army to Plan Century 21
March 17: Earth Care Paper — Doing Well and Doing Good
March 24: Freedom Stories, Freedom Songs
March 31: Freedman Speaks Out Against Evil
April 7: The New American Scarcity
April 14: Trading Debt for Nature Instead of Nature for Debt
April 21: Land Trusts Provide a New Tool for Growth Control
April 28: Around the World in 24 Days
May 5: Singapore Leads the Good Life Under a Benevolent Dictator
May 12:The State of the World as Revealed by a Month of Mail
May 19: Alaska Oil vs. Alaska Wildlife: Many Voices
May 26: Why Choosing a President can Change a Nation
June 2: A Negabarrel Saved is a Barrel Earned
June 9: Out of the Mouths of the Babes
June 16: The Earth and the Nation Do Not Need More Plutonium
June 23: The Strength of the Nation Is in Its Two-Headed Nails
June 30: The Greenhouse Effect Meets the Press
July 7: A Lament from the Countryside
July 14: Private and Public Addictions
July 21: Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer to the Greenhouse Problem
July 28: Methanol Is Not What It Takes to Clear the Air
August 4: Organic Farms are Weathering the Drought
August 11: Who wants a President Who’s Gone to a Psychiatrist?
August 18: Real Change — Good or Bad — Takes Longer Than We Think
August 25: We Should Prove What to Whom About Acid Rain?
September 1: Election Year Lessons about Right and Wrong
September 9: What Americans Don’t Understand About the Soviet Union
September 9: Have We Finally Come to the Limits of Growth?
September 22: The Population Bomb has not Stopped Ticking
September 29: Depopulation Is Not a Problem: Population Growth Is
October 6: Drugs in the Bloodstream of Democracy
October 13: A Guide to American Campaign Language
October 20: Astronauts and Cosmonauts Tell Us About Home
October 27: We’re not Choosing Values, We’re Choosing Assumptions
November 3: Out of Sight, Out of Mind — In Sight, Out of Mind
November 10: Dark Thoughts on a Bright November Morning
December 1: The Tragedy of the Commons on Georges Bank, and Elsewhere
December 8: Number Seventeen in Infant Health, Number One in Garbage
December 15: Let’s Do the Environment Story Better This Time
December 22: Being Homeless is More Than Being Without Shelter

 

1989

January 5: Two Letters Across a Gulf
January 12: The Disintegration of the Insurance System
January 19: Waking up from Eight Years of Illusion
January 26: Controlling Growth by Controlling Attractiveness
February 2: A Mixed Message from Bush on Energy
February 9: The People Should Do It, the Government Should Do It
February 16: To Save the Environment Start by Saving Landsat
February 23: Hiding the Symptoms, Maintaining the Sales
March 2: Freedom of Speech, up to a Point
March 9: What Is Biodiversity and Why Should We Care?
March 16: The Senior Citizens of 2089
March 23: Burning Coal in Connecticut, Planting Trees in Guatemala
March 30: “Clean-up” is the Wrong Word
April 6: Denmark’s Hazardous Waste Disposal System
April 13: Why Was Anyone Surprised by the Exxon Valdez?
April 20: A Decade Lost, When There Isn’t a Decade to Lose
April 27: Small Miracles in the Philippines
May 4: When We’re Ready for Fusion Energy, It’s Ready for Us
May 18: High Up Ozone Versus Low Down Ozone, and Outer Atmospheric Confusions
May 25: Eco-Chic for the Eco-Freak
June 1: Consumer Pressure Speeds up a Farming Revolution
June 9: A Week to Reflect upon Leadership
June 16: Nothing is so Powerful as an Exponential whose Time has Come
June 22: It’s a Long, Long way to Clean Air
June 29: The Map is not the Territory; The Flag is not the Nation
July 6: The Richest Ten Percent, The Poorest Forty Percent
July 13: A Letter, Anguish, and a Rubber Band
July 20: What are we Really Fighting About?
July 27: A Call for Environmental Success Stories
August 3: Seeing Ourselves as our Neighbors See Us
August 10: The Dilemna of Dursban and Dartmouth’s Elms
August 17: Allergic to the Twentieth Century
August 24: The Planet Is Not in Danger, Our Ideas Are
August 31: The Sportscar of Showerheads
September 7: Do We Need Another Drought?
September 14: Environment and Freedom in Eastern Europe
September 21: The Environment, the Capital Gains Tax and the Burden of Proof
September 28: The Greenhouse Effect, Left, Right, and Center
October 5: The Costs of the Greenhouse Effect will be Unpayable
October 19: When our Enemies Become Us, Who do we Become?
October 26: A Nation Hyped on New-Jazz
October 26: 101 Things you can do About the Greenhouse Effect
November 2: When is “Recycling” not Recycling?
November 9: Bad and Good Environmental Marks for McDonald’s
November 16: Overdue Thanks to the Soil Bugs
November 23: Solar Hydrogen — A Fuel for Avoiding a Greenhouse Future
November 30: Romania Still Stands — And so do Other Dictatorships
December 7: A Week’s Trash is Heavy Burden
December 14: Ashoka Fellows: Enterprises for a Better World
December 21: Many Kinds of Giving
December 28: Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Glasnost?

 

1990

January 4: Many Opinions on Whether Wilderness Matters
January 12: Millions, Billions, Trillions, and the Peace Dividend
January 18: The Cave-Man Approach to Cancer, Pests, and Noriega
January 26: Ceausescu’s Longest-Lasting Legacy — The Cohort of ’67
February 1: Legalization or Prohibition: That is not the Question
February 8: The Great Disposable Diaper Debate
February 15: Inactive Bush; Interactive Gorbachev
February 22: Greenhouse Extremists — On Both Sides
March 1: The Story of an Incinerator — So Far
March 8: Our GNP is up; Our Welfare is Down
March 22: The Grass Doesn’t Pay the Clouds for the Rain
March 29: There’s Only so Much Room in the Rumen
April 5: The Lessons of Exxon Valdez
April 12: The Third Great Revolution
April 19: A New Materials System Arises in Fits and Starts
April 26: So is the Earth Warming or Isn’t it?
May 3: A McDonald’s in the Hospital?
May 10: Cancer is a Learning Experience
May 17: Paying the Third World to Save the Ozone Layer
May 24: Working Toward World Without CFCs
May 31: State of the Village Report
June 7: The Family Farm and Sustainable Agriculture Act of 1995
June 14: Four Not-So-Easy Things you can do to Save the Planet
June 21: The World is not Going Down the Tubes — Or is it?
June 28: Not Seeing the Forest for the Dollar Bills
July 5: The World’s First Electronic Magazine
July 12: Letter to a Friend in Africa
July 19: The G-7 Environmental Scorecard
July 27: A Letter to a Very Smart Man
August 2: The ABCs of the S&Ls
August 9: A Rohschach Test in the Middle East
August 16: Tough Planet or Fragile Planet?
August 23: On Bathtubs, Carbon Dioxide, and Disrespect
August 30: Saddam Hussein has Done us a Favor
September 6: East Europe’s Agriculture in Ferment
September 13: Lessons From the Soft Path: Denmark’s Energy Policy
September 20: It Takes a lot to Run a Biosphere
September 27: To Solve the Energy Problem You Have to Want to
October 4: None of the Above
October 11: A Scientific Consensus on Global Warming
October 18: Out of the Frying Pan
October 26: Basic Facts About Energy and the Middle East
November 1: What We don’t Know About the Budget isn’t Easy to Find Out
November 7: Many Creation Stories, None of them Plausible
November 8: Three Case Studies for the Business Schools
November 15: Nuclear Weapons Have Never Been so Dangerous
November 29: A New Role for the CIA
December 6: A Declaration of Independence from Junk Mail
December 13: What Does it Mean to be Green?
December 20: Letters from Africa, Help from America
December 27: Kindergarten Resolutions for Living Together

 

1991

January 3: Wage a Quiet War Against War
January 10: One More Chapter in the History of Oil and War
January 17: Making up a War
January 24: The Costs of War to Those at Home
January 30: A New Energy Analysis, An Old Energy Policy
February 7: What, More on Global Warming?
February 14: Junk Mail Myths, Facts, and Creative Ideas
February 21: Speaking out in a Time of War
February 28: Names, Faces, and Families
March 7: The Lessons of War
March 14: Markets Don’t Make Energy Policy, People Do
March 21: Shopping at the Coop: Anything that Exists is Possible
March 28: Anyone Want to Bet the Planet?
April 4: Plus or Minus Two Hundred Billion Dollars
April 11: When Free Traders Win, the Nation Loses
April 18: Environmental News Proves No One Right or Wrong
April 25: Nancy and the October Surprise
May 2: Another Fight for the NIMBYs
May 9: Kuwait’s Oil — The Future up in Flames
May 16: Handling Wastes the Way the Creator Intended
May 23: What is a Wild Tomato Worth?
May 30: Energy Ideas from Inside and Outside the Beltway
June 6: Grosscon Versus Defendus for the Third World
June 13: Professor Meadows, Why Don’t You Like Nuclear Power
June 20: An Outrageous Proposal in Preparation for UNCED
June 27: Pick-Your-Own Land Use Planning
July 4: Lumber Company Journalism
July 11: Nobody Ever Dies of Overpopulation
July 18: When All Nature Flows Through Human Hands
July 25: Beware the Sloshing of Loose Capital
August 1: Corporations Tell Us All About the Environment
August 8: Renewable Energy Comes of Adolescence
August 22: Let’s Have Some Hugs for John Sununu
August 29: Drift to Low Performance
September 5: National Energy Policy — Write Now
September 12: Politically Correct, Academically Correct, Scientifically Correct, Bigotedly Correct
September 19: Fighting for Democracy Abroad and at Home
September 26: Corporations Shape an Ozone-Friendly Coalition
October 3: Some Practical Aid for the (Former) Soviet Union
October 10: Improving Child Health Without Shifting the Burden
October 17: He Who Frames the Question Determines the Answer
October 24: The Environment Can Support Bonfires — For Awhile, Anyway
October 31: A Letter to a Great Teacher
November 7: What on Earth to do About Population?
November 14: An Introduction to American Politics for Melinda
November 21: Nature is More than a Commodity
November 28: Things Fall Apart; The Center Cannot Hold
December 5: Twenty Years of Destruction and Progress
December 26: Ho Humbug!

 

1992

January 2: The Corporate Citizens’ Council for Mom and Apple Pie
January 9: Nothing Left but the DNA
January 16: The Bank of Crooks, Criminals, and Counterfeit Spirituality
January 23: Hair of the Dog That Bit You
January 30: How About a Short Guy for the Next President?
February 6: Amazing Energy Facts for Fun and Profit
February 13: Turning the Accusatory Finger Around
February 20: My Three Minutes of Fame
February 27: Irradiated Food: Safe, but No Thanks
March 5: A Voter’s Guide to the National Economy
March 12: Miracles From Nature Take a Long Time to Develop
March 19: The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away
March 26: The Important News Is Breaking at U.N. Headquarters
April 2: We Can’t Go On Growing This Way
April 9: Over the Speed Limits
April 16: Accelerating with a Foggy Window on an Icy Road
April 17: Will the Clean Air Act Stop Growth, or Will Growth Stop the Clean Air Act
April 23: What Does Sustainability Mean?
April 30: There Are Limits to Growth, But No Limits to Love
May 7: Who Cares Whether George Goes to Rio?
May 14: Should Real Environmentalists Eat Beef?
May 28: Why It’s a Conference on Environment and Development
June 4: What’s a Scapegoat to Do?
June 11: Earth Summit Advice from a Gorilla
June 18: Earth Summit Summary–Consciousness Precedes Being
June 25: Traumas to the Planet That Have and Haven’t Happened
July 2: Time for a Celebration
July 9: Al Gore for Vice President
July 24: Ross Perot, Jesse Jackson, and the Politics of Protest
July 30: How Long Does It Take to Make the Air Clean?
August 2: If It’s Broke, Be Careful How You Fix It
August 13: How to Stop a Bloody Run of History?
August 15: Let’s Have a Little More Feedback
August 20: “Liberal” Isn’t a Dirty Word; “Conservative” Isn’t Either
August 27: Free Trade Benefits Traders, Not Nations
September 3: The Environment President Whittles Away the National Parks
September 10: EC Come, EC Go: How Denmark Slowed the Rush Toward European Union
September 17: The Draft Issue and the Character Issue
September 24: Enclosure in an Eco-Boomerang Produces a New Way of Seeing
October 1: OK Kids, Time to Turn to your Snickers Lesson3

 

1993

January 7: The Nuclear Power Industry Helps Women Sort Out the Issues
January 14: Taxing What We Don’t Want, Instead of What We Want
January 21: He’ll Break our Hearts, and We’ll Break His
January 28: The Health Care System Is Sick
February 4: A President for the Bottom of the Long Wave
February 11: Town Meetings of the Airwaves
February 18: How to Beat the Coming Gas Price Hike
February 25: The Failed Clinton Presidency Is Off to a Good Environmental Start
March 4: You See the Greenhouse Effect When You Believe It
March 11: Stuckness on the Pemigewassett, and Elsewhere
March 18: Watching the Energy Dollars Leak Through the Cracks
March 25: Simple Economic Models and the Real World
April 1: Rules for the New World Order: A Citizen’s Proposal
April 8: National Train Wrecks Result from National Addictions
April 15: The Endangered Species Act is not Working Well for Most Species, Including Humans
April 22: Endangered Species, Endangered Ecosystems, Endangered Humanity
April 29: Saving the Planet Starts with Doing Your Homework
May 6: Health Care – Why Not the Best?
May 13: We Need Change, In Spite of the Upset
May 20: Seattle Citizens Define Their Own Dow-Jones Average
May 27: Slowly Silencing Spring
June 3: Who Will Tell the People
June 10: How Do You Stop a $44 Billion Gorilla?
June 17: A Speech I’d Like to Hear from President Clinton
June 24: Why Charlton, Rush, and I Like Jurassic Park
July 1: Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Pepsi Ad
July 8: The New Forest Plan – An Uncontrolled Experiment
July 15: Children, Pesticides, and Long Delays
July 22: Walking Awhile in Each Others’ Moccasins
July 28: Brazil Has Yet to Learn the Meaning of Sustainable Development
August 5: Power to the Planners or to the People?
August 12: The Reagan Revolution Isn’t Over Yet
August 19: How Many Species Are Endangered? How Do We Know?
August 25: How One Bit of Your Foreign Aid Money Was Spent
September 1: How the Ozone Story Became a Volcano Story
September 9: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Economists About NAFTA
September 16: Free Trade Can Work Against the Environment – Or For It
September 23: First Regulate Sweatshops, Pirates, and Casinos, Then Open Trade
September 29: Tuning in to NAFTA
October 14: Resisting the Advent of Ads
October 21: How to Invite – Or Not Invite – A Speaker to your Next Event
October 28: Biosphere As Theater
November 4: Those Who Build Wood Houses Shouldn’t Live in Chaparral
November 11: The NAFTA Debate–More Than Al Gore and Ross Perot
November 18: What You Pay Up Front Isn’t All You Pay
November 25: Bovine Growth Hormone–Not the Only Choice
December 2: Great Gollups of Opinion, For Those Who Have the Stomach
December 16: Going Too Far
December 23: Your Money or Your Life
December 30: Cleaning Up Loose Ends for the New Year

 

1994

January 6: Words for a Sustainable World
January 13: Restoring American Values: Who Goes First?
January 20: Can There Be Capitalism in a Sustainable World?
January 27: Spinning the Environmental Good News
February 3: A Farewell Address by the World Bank’s Most Outrageous Economist
February 10: Need the Coming Anarchy Come?
February 17: Greening the White House is a Big Job
February 24: All Tied Up in Environmental Snits
March 3: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and Trust Your Common Sense
March 10: Turtles, Eagles, Whales, Love, and Power
March 17: L.A.–A Joke, A Basket Case, or a Leader Toward Sustainability?
March 24: A Nuclear Power Plant Out of the Old World Order
March 31: The Most Undiscussable Topic in the World
April 7: Distractions from the Real World
April 14: After Rio: The Governments’ and the Citizens’ Energy Plans
April 21: Preparing for the Birth Summit
April 28: Hillary Jokes Are Not So Funny
May 5: Health Care–Let’s Bring In Some New Designers
May 12: You Can’t Ban Chlorine, But You Can Stop Sloshing It Around
May 19: Ithaca Creates Its Own Money
May 26: Is Development the Best Contraceptive–Or Are Contraceptives?
June 2: The Dream of a Better City Is Always in the Heads of its Residents
June 9: What to Do About Thugs in Power?
June 16: On Getting a “MacArthur”
June 23: Biosphere 2 Teaches Us Another Lesson
June 30: Fifty Years Later–We Need Another Bretton Woods Conference
July 9: The Land and Water Conservation Fund Needs To Be Spent
July 14: Haiti Need Not Remain the Basket Case of the Western Hemisphere
July 21: A Compulsive Compromiser Makes a Bad President
July 28: First Campaign Reform, Then Health Reform
August 4: How to Fight Superstore Sprawl
August 18: Impacting Nature — The Damage Isn’t Always Near at Hand
August 18: Ghandi’s Seven Blunders–And Then Some
August 25: You Are What You Put Through Your Mind
September 1: Numbers, Myths, Misconceptions About World Population
September 8: Who Has a Population Problem?
September 15: Three Population Goals, One Achieved, One Achievable, One Not Discussible
September 22: What Use Is It to Be A Superpower?
September 29: A Thousand Miles Per Gallon
October 6: Plutocrats Don’t Know What’s Good for Them, Or Us
October 13: Late Frost–A Leading Indicator of Climate Change?
October 20: The Silence About GATT
October 27: GATT Concentrates Too Much Power in the Wrong Hands
November 3: A New Society for a New Economics
November 10: Addictive Welfare–Can People Be Fixed?
November 17: The People Have Not Spoken
November 24: Bar Codes for the Biosphere
December 1: How to Talk About Changing a System
December 8: A Gift for the Nature Lover Who Has Everything
December 15: Newt Has Some Right Ideas for the Wrong Reasons
December 22: Peace on Earth, Good Will to Sheep and Men

 

1995

January 5: The Most Expensive Health Care System in the World
January 12: Who Causes Environmental Problems?
January 19: Immigration Policy That’s Practical As Well As Noble
January 26: What Keeps You Going?
February 2: The Government Budget–So How Would You Balance It?
February 9: Clearing Away the Budgetary Smoke and Mirrors
February 16: Advance News from the Greenhouse
February 23: A Really Outrageous Contract With America
March 2: How to Talk About Badness Without Using Strong Words?
March 9: Pay Me Not to Pollute
March 16: Keeping People in Cages
March 23: Hands Around the Capitol
March 30: We Are More Than What We Own
April 6: Beware of Right-Leaning Control of the Left-Leaning Media
April 13: Ice Cracks in Antarctica, Delegates Dither in Berlin
April 20: On This Day We Examine the Failed Environmental Movement
April 26: Pointing the Accusatory Finger at Ourselves
May 4: Whose Cost? Whose Benefit? Measured by Whom?
May 11: Shining a Spotlight on Hate Speech
May 18: Stopping by Lambs on a Sunny Morning
May 25: Ebola–Not Highly Contagious, But a Grim Warning
June 1: If We’re Going to Have Block Grants, Let’s Make Them Work
June 8: Don’t Worry, Be Happy, The Environment is in Great Shape
June 15: The Song of June in the Country (With a Lesson in Ecology)
June 22: George Washington and I Are Subjects of Groundless Rumors
June 29: What Would Happen If We Went Beyond Partisan Politics?
July 6: Let’s Hang on to the Family Jewels
July 13: One Quiet Woman Defines the American Dream Her Way
July 20: You Fought for Freedom, Not for a Flag
July 27: Renewable Energy is in the Capable Hands of the People
August 3: An Endangered Species Story
August 10: Unabomber is Crazy and Dangerous, but Only Partly Wrong
August 17: An Assignment from the Anti-Barbaric Coalition
August 24: The Balkans Are Driven by Their Leaders, Not Their History
August 31: Mop-and-Bucket Solutions Keep Us Forever Cleaning Up
September 14: There’s Only One Campaign Issue
September 21: Gotta Watch That Congress Every Minute
September 28: Unserious and Serious Suggestions for Reclaiming Democracy
October 5: Politicians Have No Idea What People Really Want
October 12: What Is Happening to the National Lands?
October 19: Giving Away the Gold
October 26: Whose Woods These Are I Think I Know
November 2: Home, Home on the Underpriced, Overgrazed Range
November 9: How Much Nature Do We Want to Leave?
November 16: Who Should Manage the National Lands?
November 23: An Instrument Panel to Help Seattle Fly Sustainably
November 30: An Early Morning Conversation with Gandhi
December 7: Let’s Take Back Christmas
December 14: Why Doesn’t Anyone Ever Say That?
December 21: The Battle of the Riders
Decemeber 28: Two Futures, One Hard, One Easy
December 29: The New Budgeting–Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

 

1996

January 4: What Should Be Privatized and What Should Not?
January 11: Ten Reasons to Wonder About the Cost of Saving Species
January 18: An Age-Old Choice Presents Itself Again
January 25: You’re Only Half the Man Your Grandfather Was
February 1: Flat Tax, Vat Tax, Splat Tax
February 8: Corporations Already Rule the World
February 15: Lying to the Pollsters
February 22: Environmental Zeros and Heroes of the 104th Congress
February 29: How Environmentalists Ought to Talk
March 7: Avoiding Another Silent Spring
March 14: Chemicals Are a Means, Not an End
March 21: Success to the Successful
March 28: We Walk On Earth With Big Feet
April 4: Repeating History in the Forests
April 18: How to Add Twelve Years to Your Life
April 25: Lawless Logging
May 9: The Republican Rider and the Mt. Graham Squirrel
May 16: What Happened to the Geographer?
May 23: The Water is Someone’s Home
May 30: The Sperm of New York Men Is Not the Issue
June 6: Keeping Up With the Politicians Via Internet
June 13: Gardening Brings Out the Truth
June 20: What Shall We Do With Our Differences?
July 6: You Can’t Live on the Pond and Have the Pond
July 11: Citizens Who Love Their Ponds Can Help to Save Them
July 18: Don Imus in My Back Yard
July 25: The Environmental Testament of a Czech Freedom Fighter
August 1: The People Plan for the Forests of the People Islands
August 8: We Can’t Load Everything onto the Land
August 15: Why be a Republican? Why be a Democrat?
August 22: They’re Still At It
August 29: Labor Day is a Time to Tell the Truth About Jobs
September 5: We Don’t Need Corporations to Fund Our National Parks
September 12: Hitler Needed a Chamberlain, Milosevic Needed a Bush and a Clinton
September 19: Waiting for the Frost
September 25: Only the Rich and Powerful are Allowed to Endanger Species
September 26: Farewell to the Delaney Amendment
October 3: The New Food Safety Law — A Bit Better, But Only a Bit
October 10: How Do We Keep Pesticides Out of Our Foods, if the Government Doesn’t?
October 17: The System is Rotten, but Vote Anyway
October 24: What the American People Really Want
October 31: Something There is That Doesn’t Love a Clearcut
November 7: The Character Issue
November 14: Not So Fast!
November 21: Don’t be a Turkey on the Day After Thanksgiving
November 28: A CEO Responds to a Spear Through the Heart
December 5: Foreign Policy on the Scale of a Neighborhood
December 12: The Laws of the Earth and the Laws of Economics
December 19: The Least of These Our Brethren
December 26: Keeping Everyone Warm

 

1997

January 2: Hands Around the Capitol
January 9: Kinder and Gentler to the Environment?
January 16: Beware of Social Security Fixes
January 23: The Cultural Creatives Are Coming
January 30: Feeling Our Feelings Might Not Be a Trivial Exercise
February 6: Dumb Things We Could Stop Doing
February 7: How a Public Health Story Becomes an Industry Legend
February 13: Beyond Bipartisanship
February 19: More Justice for Chemicals Than for Presidents
February 20: Sludge By Any Other Name Can Still Be A Problem
March 6: What’s Wrong With the Schools?
March 13: The Secret Life of My Computer
March 20: As Individuals We Learn, As Organizations We Resist
March 27: Millennium, Shmillennium
April 3: Industry Could Be a Clean Air Good Guy
April 10: The Land Doesn’t Put the Kids in the Schools
April 17: A Week to Kick the TV Habit
April 24: Our Michael Dorris
May 1: Environmental Debates Have Science and Emotion on All Sides
May 1: The Ads Tell the Story of the Universe
May 15: Russia and China, Seen Through Fun-House Mirrors
May 20: Welfare for Politicians Could Help the Welfare of the Rest of Us
May 22: How Much Is Nature Worth? Who Says? Who Cares?
June 5: The Real Costs of Growth in Oregon
June 12: Cut Off From Global Markets, Cuba Invents a New Agriculture
June 19: Rio Plus Five and Going Backward
June 26: The Tobacco Companies Aren’t the Only Ones
July 3: Old Cars, Air Conditioners, CFCS, and Hoaxes
July 10: Expert Statements Worth Paying Attention To
July 17: The Big Squeeze
July 24: From Dump to Garden: Burlington’s Intervale
July 31: Is a Bioengineered Potato Organic?
August 7: The New American Dream Home
August 14: Co-Housing–Somewhere Between Neighborhood and Commune
August 21: The Black Helicopters are Coming!
August 29: Where Does News Stop and Gossip Begin?
September 4: Left and Right and Power
September 11: The Endangered Species Act Fails When It Is Needed Most
September 18: Two Possible Futures for Farming and Food
October 2: Is There Anyone Out There Who Doesn’t Want to Live in a Democracy?
October 9: Praying for Wouter — and for Us All
October 16: We Can Do Something About Population by Doing Something About Poverty
October 23: The Greenhouse Problem as Seen by Europe and the U.S.
October 30: A Building Can be a Teacher
November 6: People of Wealth Stand Up for Greater Equality
November 13: Trade on the Fast Track — What’s the Hurry?
November 20: Why do These Irresponsible People Blame Society for Their Problems?
November 27: The Last Lament of the Macintosh User
December 4: Mother Gaia Reflects on the Global Climate Conference
December 11: And You Thought You Liked Shrimp
December 18: Venture Capital for Public Entrepreneurs
December 25: A Computer Model Tests Our Red, Green or Blue-Colored Glasses

 

1998

January 1: You Are Not Your Square Footage
January 8: Meeting the Kyoto Standards — Piece of Cake
January 15: The Asian Meltdown and the Myth of Ascendant Capitalism
January 22: Veggie Libel Suits are Meant to Slapp Free Speech
February 5: Junk Mail in a Time of Declining Trees
February 12: What’s so Great About Being Big?
February 26: Organic Farmers Fight National Organic Standards
March 5: Hurray! We Get to Revise Our Education Funding System!
March 12: Living on Sun, Water, Wind, Grass, and Community
March 19: Here a Vroom, There a Vroom, Everywhere a Vroom, Vroom
March 26: We Don’t Need New Ideas; We Just Need to Stop Having Old Ones
April 2: Immigration Tears the Sierra Club Apart
April 16: CSA Farms Can Help Our Health, Our Land, and Our Farmers
April 23: Monsanto and Fox and Consumers’ Right to Know
April 30: Noise-Making Goop and the Carrying Capacity of the Earth
May 7: Someone Will Have to Do Something About All This
May 14: Don’t Get Into Evolutionary Races with Small Critters
May 21: There’s “Pesticide-Free” and Then There’s “Organic”
May 21: A Consciously Chosen Death in the Netherlands
June 4: With Indian and Pakistani Bombs, Is Anyone Feeling More Secure?
June 11: End of Congressional Session, Riders Run Amok
June 18: Multibillion Dollar Global Markets Aren’t the Answer
June 25: How Did We Ever Let TV Get So Bad?
July 2: Y2K and the Average Bite of Food
July 9: The News Behind the News
July 16: Eating into Resilience Saves Money — in the Short Run
July 23: Neatniks of the World, Arise!
August 6: Lewinsky, Schmewinsky, Could We Have Some Real News?
August 13: Sending Air Conditioners to Texas, and Other Vicious Cycles
August 20: Presidents and Citizens and Responsibility
August 27: The Environmental Legend and the Real Tongass
September 3: We Can All Hardly Wait for Electricity Deregulation
September 10: Chemical Company Arguments That Don’t Quite Connect
September 17: Advice from Abroad on Restructuring Electricity
September 24: It’s NOT About Sex, It’s About Civil Rights
October 1: Financial Meltdown — Many Theories, Many Futures
October 8: 200 Years Since Malthus and We Still Haven’t Proved Him Wrong
October 15: The Lorax and the Truax — Hey, Can We Talk?
October 22: Michael Moore’s Revolution — Everybody Vote
October 29: Just a Few Simple Questions for the Politicians
November 4: Fred and Pat Have Cookies and Milk
November 12: Thomas Jefferson and Donella Meadows, Slave-Owners
November 19: Y2K and the Great Hawaiian Toilet Paper Panic
November 26: Mad About Ads
December 3: The World’s Billionaires and the Game of Giving
December 10: Where Have all the Frogs and Toads Gone?
December 17: The Ski Store and the Real Cost of Fun
December 24: The Politicians, the Teacher and the People

 

1999

January 7: Weeping for the Shrimp and the Zambians and the Macaques
January 14: Join In Nonviolent Resistance to a World Takeover Plot
January 21: Sand County Almanac Fifty Years Later
January 28:The Hottest Year Yet
February 4: The State of the World as Seen by its Babies
February 11: A Battle Not Of Snippets But Of Moral Mindsets
February 18: Sprawl by Any Other Name Is Still Out of Control
February 25: Urban Growth Means Lower Taxes – And Other Myths
March 4: If We Don’t Like Sprawl, Why Do We Go On Sprawling?
March 11: So What Can We Do – Really Do – About Sprawl?
March 18: Monsanto Gets Pie in the Face
March 25: Genetic Engineering Is Not Just More of the Same
April 1: Why Kosovo is a Battleground Again
April 7: Social Security Is No Problem, Unless We Make It One
April 15: The Dow Passes Ten Thousand – Hooray?
April 19: Living Green isn’t a Scarifice, it’s an Adventure
April 22: Song for the Bluefin Tuna
April 29: The Great North American Carbon Sink – Maybe
May 5: Amory Lovins Sees the Future and it is Hydrogen
May 13: A Tale of Two Fisheries
May 20: Never Mind Paper vs. Plastic Bags, How Did You Get To The Grocery Store?
May 27: What’s the President Worth? For Doing What?
June 3: There’s Farming and Then There’s Farming
June 10: Clustering – Good Idea, Hard To Do
June 17: A Climate Scientist Takes His Computer Model Seriously
June 23: Ethnic Cleansing in the Chicken Coop
July 1: Rewriting the Story of the Ant and the Grasshopper
July 8: The Forest is More than a Collection of Trees
July 15: Who Needs Germ-Fighting Vacuum Cleaner Bags?
July 22: Congress is Playing the Ugly Rider Game Again
July 29: Two Mindsets, Two Visions of Sustainable Agriculture
August 5: The World’s Top Five Consumers in Many Categories
August 12: Whom Do We Blame, As We Watch Nature Dry Up?
August 19: How Many Experts Do We Need Before We Heed Earth’s Warning?
August 26: Seven-Plus Wonders of Sustainability
September 2: The Latest News From the Ozone Layer
September 9: There’s What They Tell Us – And What They Don’t Tell Us
September 16: If the Government Says It’s Safe, It’s Safe. Right?
September 23: So Everyone Wants Peace, So What?
October 7: Six Billion of Us: Boo? Hooray?
October 14: What Happens When You Believe the Prophets of Doom?
October 21: Americans are the World’s Guinea Pigs for Bioengineered Foods
October 28: A Question for Al Gore
November 4: Poverty is Real, and it is Not OK
November 11: Why Bother With Organic Flowers?
November 18: The People Meet the World Trade Organization
November 25: Why Greens Don’t Love the WTO
December 2: The WTO Protesters and the Powers That Be
December 9: Close Encounters With a Lifetime of Stuff
December 16: Saying It Straight
December 23: A New Kind of Organization Based on Purpose and Principle
December 30: A Disappointing Turn of the Millennium

 

2000

January 6: The New Century as Seen From More Serious Places
January 13: AOL Time Warner and the Dalai Lama
January 20: How Campaign Reform Could Clean up a lot of Hog Manure
January 27: Y No Y2K Disaster?
February 3: Watching the Primary from Across the River
February 10: Globalization Hits Hungary with a Wave of Cyanide
February 17: Trying to Measure Which Nations Are Sustainable
February 24: A Climate-Protection Technology But Not a Magic Bullet
March 2: Who Has a Right To Do What with the Land?
March 9: A Nasty Campaign Against Organic Food
March 16: Moments of Shocked Silence About Biotech
March 23: Now Let Us Complain About Catalogs
March 30: Begging, Whining, and Getting Sensible About Oil
April 6: Japan Beats America to the Twenty-First Century Car
April 13: The Globalization of Ben and Jerry’s
April 20: Earth Day Plus Thirty, As Seen By The Earth
April 27: Rhetoric About Taxes, Facts About Taxes
May 4: Give Me Feedback and I Will Change the World, Or At Least My Own Habits
May 11: Kalle Lasn is Mad As Heck and Isn’t Going To Take It Anymore
May 19: Ecological Destruction and a Vermont Farm in May
May 25: What To Do With Your Single, Precious Presidential Vote?
June 1: The Catbox Guide to Business Success
June 8: Three Companies Say ‘Oops’ In Different Ways
June 15: The Good is the Enemy of the Perfect
June 22: How’s a Green Group to Survive Without Junk Mail?
June 29: Things Are Getting Worse at a Slower Rate
July 13: Le Monde n’est pas une Marchandise. Moi Non Plus. (The World is not For Sale. Me Neither.)
July 20: Forget Camp David, Forget Survivor, Watch Capitol Hill
July 27: Mad Cows, Mad Sheep, Mad Elk, Mad People
August 3: Getting Beyond the Choice Between Tweedledum and Tweedledee
August 10: A World Food Production Quiz
August 17: How It Happened That We Don’t Regulate Biotech
August 24: Taking Over From God On The Seventh Day
August 31: There’s “Survivor” and then There’s Real Survival
September 7: Let’s Stop Racing Each Other And Go For Bear Instead
September 14: An Environmentalist Encounters An Environmental Law
September 21: The Death Tax Does Not Deserve To Die
September 28: Consumer Power Reforms Chicken Factories – But Not Enough
October 5: “Debating” All The Way From L To P
October 12: Scientists, Fluoride Loonies, and the Evidence
October 19: Hard Questions for the Candidates
October 26: The Brothers Foley Develop a Sense of Humus
October 26: The Campaign Glass Is 95 Percent Empty
November 9: A Message To New Leaders From A Fallen Giant
November 16: The Power of a Vote
November 23: Things Are Getting Better Or Worse, Depending On What You Count
November 30: No Point In Waiting Around For Leadership
December 7: The 2000 Election in the Cool Light of History
December 14: Closing the Barn Door on POPs
December 21: The Senator, the President, and the Sea Lion
December 28: An Ounce of Precaution

 

2001

January 4: Readers Roar Back with Varying Degrees of Politeness
January 4: Ralph Nader and the Realos and the Fundis
January 11: Trying Hard Here to Work up Some Feeling of National Unity
January 18: Electricity Restructuring and Faith in the Market
January 25: An Ode to the Cow and the Milk
February 1: What Really Needs to be Said About our Last Lamented Election
February 1: The Arctic’s on Thin Ice, and we Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

 

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About The Donella Meadows Project

The mission of the Donella Meadows Project is to preserve Donella (Dana) H. Meadows’s legacy as an inspiring leader, scholar, writer, and teacher; to manage the intellectual property rights related to Dana’s published work; to provide and maintain a comprehensive and easily accessible archive of her work online, including articles, columns, and letters; to develop new resources and programs that apply her ideas to current issues and make them available to an ever-larger network of students, practitioners, and leaders in social change.  Read More

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