We Walk On Earth With Big Feet
By Donella Meadows
–March 28, 1996–
Picture a city, with skyscrapers, roads, cars, towers, lights all jammed together. Now picture a huge, bare human foot reaching down from the city, stepping on the earth, crushing daisies.
That’s the image William Rees, professor of planning at the University of British Columbia, instills in the minds of his students. He calls it the Ecological Footprint, [...]
After Rio: The Governments’ and the Citizens’ Energy Plans
By Donella Meadows
–April 14, 1994–
The Earth Summit in Rio, the largest global meeting ever held, is nearly two years behind us but still very much alive. Heads of state from nearly every government went home from Rio bearing treaties to implement, including a climate convention, a biodiversity agreement, and a sweeping environmental mandate called Agenda 21. There is a new [...]
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and Trust Your Common Sense
By Donella Meadows
–March 3, 1994–
Out there in readerland some folks live at an amazingly high level of environmental consciousness. For example, here’s part of a letter I got recently from a concerned Vermonter named Gretchen.
“I live on a steep hillside that no one wants to mow, and I’m using sheep to keep the land open. They fertilize the land as [...]
Dear Folks: May 22, 1993
Dear Folks,
Every year I remember, too late, my vow from the past year never, ever to leave this farm in May — or in the month between mid-September and mid-October. Those are the times of rapid change, the times when we wake up every morning to something new. In May the daily newness is in the arriving voices of the [...]
Watching the Energy Dollars Leak Through the Cracks
By Donella Meadows
–March 18, 1993–
On a sunny, windless March morning Marc Rosenbaum of Meriden NH brought his blower door to the home of his neighbors, Carol and Gordon Ashey. His purpose was to measure the air-tightness of the Ashey’s two-bedroom, single-story house, and to demonstrate the blower door to three interested onlookers — Mike Currier, an eighth grader from the [...]
