The Real Costs of Growth in Oregon
By Donella Meadows
–June 5, 1997–
The myth persists. Growth is good for us. Development will bring in more tax money. The only way to get our property taxes down is to bring more people and houses and businesses to town.
If you’re one of the many who still believe this, look around at cities and towns more populous or more rapidly growing [...]
The Land Doesn’t Put the Kids in the Schools
By Donella Meadows
–April 10, 1997–
Vermont is in a tizzy over a set of gnarled-together problems that plague every state — schools, land, property tax.
I don’t suppose any place can boast of a happy solution to school funding or land taxes. Most of us live with a set of compromises that endure only out of habit. No one questions the status [...]
Immigration Policy That’s Practical As Well As Noble
By Donella Meadows
–January 19, 1995–
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus wrote those inspiring words on the occasion of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. They sank deep [...]
Haiti Need Not Remain the Basket Case of the Western Hemisphere
By Donella Meadows
–July 14, 1994–
Poor Haiti. Intractable Haiti. Haiti, oppressed by Papa Doc, Baby Doc, and now a pack of even more rapacious generals. Haiti, the problem that keeps washing up on our shore.
I am hearing some of the most peaceable folks I know, folks who know and love the Haitian land and people, say with great reluctance that it’s [...]
Fifty Years Later–We Need Another Bretton Woods Conference
By Donella Meadows
–June 30, 1994–
Just weeks after D-Day, while the Allied armies were still battling their way toward Germany, a quieter event occurred that would shape the world as powerfully as the war in Europe.
On July 1, 1944, 730 delegates from 44 nations assembled at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. They stayed three weeks. When they [...]
