Dear Folks: December 24, 1995
Dear Folks,
Merry Christmas! Or, by the time you get this, Happy New Year!
It’s about 5 PM on Christmas Eve. A very light snow is in the air, the flakes so insubstantial that they get wafted up a few times before they finally settle down. We’ve had three big snowstorms, and there’s more than a foot of white stuff piled up [...]
Dear Folks: April 28, 1995
Dear Folks,
Slowly, haltingly, tantalizingly, spring creeps toward the farm through all of March and most of April. Until this week we were marking time, moping at the gray, stormy weather, wandering outside on the occasional nice days, kicking at the ground, poking for signs of life, and making up work to do. Too wet and cold to till the garden. [...]
We Are More Than What We Own
By Donella Meadows
–March 30, 1995–
It was 1992 and photographer Peter Menzel had been covering oil fires in Kuwait and clan wars in Somalia, when he heard about the wild success of Madonna’s sex book. The contrast between that exercise in fantasy and his experience of the planet’s hot spots was too much. “I thought the world needed a reality check,” [...]
Who Causes Environmental Problems?
By Donella Meadows
–January 12, 1995–
To a small but influential bunch of global thinkers the abbreviation “IPAT” (pronounced “eye-pat”) says volumes. It summarizes all the causes of our environmental problems.
IPAT comes from a formula originally put forth by ecologist Paul Ehrlich and physicist John Holdren:
Impact equals Population times Affluence times Technology.
Which is to say, the damage we do to the earth [...]
Who Has a Population Problem?
By Donella Meadows
–September 8, 1994–
There’s a general belief in this country that the global population problem exists Over There somewhere, or maybe Down South of our border. But certainly not here.
If we could see ourselves as the other 95.5 percent of the world sees us, we’d know that nothing could be farther from the truth.
U.S. family size is going up, [...]
