Nobody Ever Dies of Overpopulation
By Donella Meadows
–July 11, 1991–
In April 1991 a great storm roared from the sea into the river delta of Bangladesh and killed a number of people that will never be accurately known, but that is estimated at over 125,000. Hundreds of thousands of cattle were killed, nine million people were left homeless, 20,000 square miles of farmland (that’s almost 13 [...]
Grosscon Versus Defendus for the Third World
By Donella Meadows
–June 6, 1991–
Amulya Reddy, a soft-spoken, urbane professor at the Indian Institute of Science, calls his government’s energy policy GROSSCON — growth-oriented, supply-sided, consumption directed. According to the Oxford Dictionary, Reddy says, “gross” means “flagrant” and “con” means “confidence trick.” The Indian energy policy is not different from the policies of most other nations of the world. That [...]
A Call for Environmental Success Stories
By Donella Meadows
–July 27, 1989–
For the past three years a Washington-based group called Renew America has published an annual report card on the environmental progress (or regress) of the 50 states. The “State of the States” report ranks the states on the strictness and completeness of their policies on such matters as water quality, air quality, waste disposal, energy conservation.
I [...]
Nothing is so Powerful as an Exponential whose Time has Come
By Donella Meadows
–June 16, 1989–
The reason environmentalists are often so gloomy is that they know what the word “exponential” means.
“A lack of appreciation for what exponential increase really means leads society to be disastrously sluggish in acting on critical issues,” said Dr. Thomas Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institution in a speech that has been reverberating through the environmental community. “I [...]
Controlling Growth by Controlling Attractiveness
By Donella Meadows
–January 26, 1989–
In Woodstock, Vermont, everyone’s mad about a highway. In other places the issue is a sewer system or a school. The real issue, of course, is growth. According to Jay Forrester’s Attractiveness Principle (Forrester is a professor of systems analysis at MIT) there’s only one way to control growth — control attractiveness.
It’s hard to imagine a [...]
