Japan Beats America to the Twenty-First Century Car
by Donella Meadows
— April 6, 2000 —
Well, there she is. Sleek and silver, dealer plates still on, got her two days ago. Seventy miles per gallon, seven hundred miles a fill-up. so they say.
Last time I bought a new car — a 1987 Honda Civic wagon that got 35 mpg at its best — I swore I’d keep it until [...]
Moments of Shocked Silence About Biotech
by Donella Meadows
— March 16, 2000 —
Biotech stocks plummeted this week as President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair requested that companies make their data on the human genome public.
Private firms are racing madly to read and patent the genetic code that makes you you and me me. They are trying to beat publicly funded labs, which are required [...]
Trade on the Fast Track — What’s the Hurry?
By Donella Meadows
–November 13, 1997–
There were plenty of bad reasons why Congress turned down President Clinton’s “fast track” trade bill — the normal “do anything to humiliate Clinton” stuff, payoffs from protectionists and labor, isolationists who fear trade because they fear the world.
But there were good reasons, too, strengthened by the fact that NAFTA, the free trade agreement with Mexico, [...]
Beyond Bipartisanship
By Donella Meadows
–February 13, 1997–
“Bipartisanship” is the in-word in Washington. What it appears to mean is compromise. Everyone stays stuck in ideology, sniping at the other side a bit more quietly, while deals are made. Cut Medicare more than the Democrats want but less than the Republicans want. Throw just enough people off welfare to appease the right without too [...]
A Compulsive Compromiser Makes a Bad President
By Donella Meadows
–July 21, 1994–
Say there’s something you really want — environmental quality, for example — but you make a compromise. You sacrifice 30 percent in order to get 70 percent.
If you do that twice, you’ve lost half of what you wanted. Do it ten times and you end up with less than 3 percent.
That calculation applies to anything you [...]
