Smarter Agriculture For the Sake of Land and People
by Hal Hamilton
— March 1, 2002 —
If you stand just outside the system of commodity agriculture and look in, the wasted opportunities are easy to see. Here at Sustainability Institute we use simulation models, but a drive down country roads is really all that’s needed. You see farmers investing in short-term productivity but rarely in long-term soil fertility. In the [...]
The Perversity of Farm Bills
by Hal Hamilton and Elizabeth Sawin
— February 1, 2002 —
Right now Congress is trying to hatch a new Farm Bill. But like every congress charged with writing farm policy for the past fifty years, the legislature is ignoring an important reality — farm policy keeps on delivering less of what we want and more of what we don’t want. Congress [...]
Electricity Restructuring and Faith in the Market
By Donella Meadows
–January 18, 2001—-
As blackouts roll through California, the New Hampshire Supreme Court just cleared the way for electrical restructuring, while a Vermont utility assures legislators that what is happening out west can’t happen here.
Why not?
As I hear people try to explain California’s electricity problem, I wonder whether anyone really understands the market system. We discuss it endlessly, we [...]
Things Are Getting Better Or Worse, Depending On What You Count
by Donella Meadows
— November 23, 2000 —
Every month I get a kind of Readers Digest for people interested in the future. It’s called Future Survey, issued by the World Future Society. Each month it contains about 50 extended summaries of recent publications about the paths — economic, environmental, social — we seem to be following.
The November 2000 issue, for example, [...]
Hard Questions for the Candidates
by Donella Meadows
— October 19, 2000 —
Well, the “debates,” carefully controlled by the major political parties, are over. I guess it was too much to expect that hard or important questions would be asked. But the candidates are still on the road, where they might be queried by an unscripted citizen. Or by a reporter who believes that fitness to [...]
