The Laws of the Earth and the Laws of Economics
By Donella Meadows
–December 12, 1996–
The first commandment of economics is: grow. Grow forever. Companies must get bigger. National economies need to swell by a certain percent each year. People should want more, make more, earn more, spend more, ever more.
The first commandment of the Earth is: enough. Just so much and no more. Just so much soil. Just so much [...]
What the American People Really Want
By Donella Meadows
–October 24, 1996–
Every day in this crazy cartoon campaign the politicians tell us what the American people want. A 15 percent tax cut. Welfare reform. Education. Whatever.
They pay fortunes for polls, these politicians, so you’d think they know what we want. But have you ever been polled? Did you notice what a cramped set of choices you were [...]
Why Doesn’t Anyone Ever Say That?
By Donella Meadows
–December 14, 1995–
Back a decade or two ago when we weren’t paying much attention, the advertising industry took over American politics, reducing debates to soundbites, using polls to tell politicians what to say, polishing image while banishing ideas.
Worst of all advertisers taught government leaders their central trick. Say any fool thing over and over and over, and it [...]
George Washington and I Are Subjects of Groundless Rumors
By Donella Meadows
–June 22, 2012–
I’m using the space of a public column here to right a personal wrong, but bear with me. I also want to illustrate a common human quirk and work up to a vital lesson.
In the preface of his new book A Moment on the Earth, Gregg Easterbrook mentions a book I co-authored more than 20 years [...]
A New Society for a New Economics
By Donella Meadows
–November 3, 1994–
When economist Herman Daly convened the first meeting of the International Society for Ecological Economics in Washington in 1990, he expected 60 or so people to show up, few of them economists. Traditional economists thought of ecological economics, insofar as they thought of it at all, as distinctly daffy.
To Daly’s surprise, that first ISEE conference drew [...]
