There’s Farming and Then There’s Farming
by Donella Meadows
— June 3, 1999 —
Awhile ago Beth Sawin and Phil Rice, researchers at the Sustainability Institute, put together a graph that I can’t get out of my mind. It shows Midwest corn yields doubling from about 60 bushels per acre in 1950 to 120 bushels on average today. Despite the doubled yield, gross earnings per acre have stayed [...]
What’s the President Worth? For Doing What?
by Donella Meadows
— May 27, 1999 —
Driving home last night I heard a snatch of radio discussion about whether we’re paying the president enough.
If I understood the argument while dodging traffic, it seems that corporate executive salaries have soared so high that the president’s salary is puny by comparison. Company CEOs earn millions. Michael Eisner of Disney earns in the [...]
The Dow Passes Ten Thousand – Hooray?
by Donella Meadows
— April 15, 1999 —
Wow! The Dow-Jones average is over ten thousand! And still, as of this writing, rising. Judging from the media celebration, here is proof positive that America is thriving.
But who or what is actually thriving?
There are two ways to answer that question. One is to travel around America — all of it, the inner cities [...]
If We Don’t Like Sprawl, Why Do We Go On Sprawling?
by Donella Meadows
— March 4, 1999 —
We have planning boards. We have zoning regulations. We have urban growth boundaries and “smart growth” and sprawl conferences. And we still have sprawl. Between 1970 and 1990 the population of Chicago grew by four percent; its developed land area grew by 46 percent. Over the same period Los Angeles swelled 45 percent in [...]
The State of the World as Seen by its Babies
by Donella Meadows
— February 4, 1999 —
Politicians and economists look at the latest GDP reports to see how their nations are doing. I look at the IMR reports.
IMR stands for infant mortality rate. It’s the number of babies out of every thousand born who die before they reach their first birthday. To give you an idea of the range of [...]
