What Does it Mean to be Green?
By Donella Medaows
December 13, 1990
The trouble with being politically Green is that you don’t fit on the left-right spectrum. You intersect that spectrum from an angle, agreeing with parts of both the conservative and the liberal agendas and objecting to other parts. “Not left, not right, but in front,” say the Greens. Since the traditional left and right have a [...]
Freedman Speaks Out Against Evil
By Donella Meadows
–March 31, 1988–
Nothing tests a community’s dedication to democracy and freedom more than the presence of a loud minority that sows hatred and dissension in the name of democracy and freedom. Dartmouth College has been blessed or cursed with such a group for the past eight years; the college has earned a national reputation as the home of [...]
Incinerator Blues, Part 4: Why Not Recycling?
By Donella Meadows
–September 24, 1987–
Most everyone involved in the Great National Garbage Problem would agree on the following propositions:
Landfills are better (and more expensive) than open dumps; they reduce smell, rats, and pollution of air and surface water. But landfills take up space and pollute groundwater.
Mass-burn incinerators are better (and much more expensive) than landfills; they take less land and [...]
A Neighborhood Controls Its Own Development
By Donella Meadows
–January 8, 1987–
A few days after Christmas, neighbors from 11 rural households in Lyme, New Hampshire, gathered at Hank and Freda Swan’s house for an easement-signing party.
Family by family, they put their names to 20 different documents, amendments to their deeds, limiting forever the number of lots that can be subdivided and houses that can be constructed on [...]
Dear Folks: October 18, 1986
Dear Folks,
It’s Saturday night, a nearly-full moon shining in my bedroom window as I type this. Dennis has just left for a trip with the craziest itinerary I ever heard — Ottawa, Seville (yes, the one in Spain), New York, Mexico City, Los Angeles and then home. All in two weeks. Suzanne is working in Boston this weekend. We’re hoping [...]
