Solar Hydrogen — A Fuel for Avoiding a Greenhouse Future
By Donella Meadows
–November 23, 1989–
If George Bush were an environmental leader, he would not have blocked an international agreement this month to curtail emissions of greenhouse gases.
He would see that the greenhouse problem is in fact an opportunity — to move beyond fossil fuels, oil spills, air pollution, and enthrallment to the Middle East, toward clean, renewable energy we can [...]
It’s a Long, Long way to Clean Air
By Donella Meadows
June 22, 1989
Everyone who breathes is hurt by air pollution; so are plants, animals, lakes, rivers, buildings, and the climate. That doesn’t make any of us terribly eager to stop our personal share of the polluting. We zoom around in inefficient cars, heat and cool poorly insulated houses, squander electricity, splash around volatile chemicals. We choke and cough, [...]
A Week to Reflect upon Leadership
By Donella Meadows
–June 9, 1989–
In Iran the Ayatollah died. In Poland the people, voting semi-freely for the first time in 40 years, rejected their party leaders. In the United States the Speaker of the House, two heartbeats away from the Presidency, stepped down, covered with mud. In China the People’s Army fired into a crowd of unarmed people.
It was a [...]
A Mixed Message from Bush on Energy
By Donella Meadows
–February 2, 1989–
Environmentalists, waiting hopefully to see whether George Bush is indeed one of them, got a puzzling mixed message this week.
Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker, in a rousing speech to delegates from 40 nations, said that the world cannot wait for solid evidence before acting on the greenhouse problem. The U.S. and the world must focus [...]
Waking up from Eight Years of Illusion
By Donella Meadows
–January 19, 1989–
“If you let me write $200 billion a year in hot checks, I’ll give you an illusion of prosperity too,” said Lloyd Bentsen in last fall’s campaign. The question is what the nation will discover, when the illusion has passed and the real economic situation is reckoned. The time for that reckoning seems to be now.
Though [...]
