Depopulation Is Not a Problem: Population Growth Is
By Donella Meadows
–September 29, 1988–
“If we don’t change our direction,” says a Chinese proverb, “we’ll end up where we are headed.” If population trends continue to unfold the way they’ve been going, the world population will grow from five billion to eight billion over the next 35 years. Ninety percent of that growth will occur in the Third World.
Over the [...]
The Population Bomb has not Stopped Ticking
By Donella Meadows
–September 22, 1988–
“Every human society is faced with not one population problem but with two,” said Margaret Mead. “How to beget and rear enough children, and how not to beget and rear too many.”
We don’t hear much about either of these problems lately, but they haven’t gone away. The world population will grow by roughly 85 million people [...]
Have We Finally Come to the Limits of Growth?
By Donella Meadows
–September 9, 1988–
In 1972 I co-authored a book called The Limits to Growth, which raised what was to me a surprising ruckus. The book was based on a computer model of global population and economic growth. It said, in essence, that the kinds and rates of growth we’re accustomed to cannot go on forever, or even very much [...]
A Lament from the Countryside
By Donella Meadows
–July 7, 1988–
As I write, the sun, low in the west, is just shining out from beneath storm clouds. This is the third bank of clouds to come over this month, drop ten minutes of soft rain, and pass on. A few minutes ago I went out and scratched in the garden with a hoe. Under the damp [...]
