Kuwait’s Oil — The Future up in Flames
By Donella Meadows
–May 9, 1991–
“Kind of sick,” was President Bush’s response to the news that the Iraqis had opened an oil terminal and let it spill into the sea on the tenth day of the Gulf War.
We were told then that the spill amounted to 11 million barrels — 40 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince [...]
One More Chapter in the History of Oil and War
By Donella Meadows
–January 10, 1991–
Daniel Yergin’s new book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power is perfect background reading for this perilous time in the history of the Middle East. It provides a much-needed long-term perspective on the politics of the Persian Gulf, and on how politics everywhere is transformed by the presence or absence of petroleum, [...]
Lessons From the Soft Path: Denmark’s Energy Policy
By Donella Meadows
–September 13, 1990–
The energy wars are back. Not the ones in the deserts of the Middle East, but the ones in national capitals the oil-using world around, where energy policies are again being formulated in an atmosphere of panic and conflict.
The battle is the same everywhere. It is between the hard path (oil, coal, nuclear, and defense of [...]
Saddam Hussein has Done us a Favor
By Donella Meadows
–August 30, 1990–
The Arabs did us a favor. That’s what some people said after the oil shocks of the 1970s had settled a bit. By jacking up the price of oil, OPEC forced us to the creativity that resulted, over the period from 1975 to 1985, in producing a dollar’s worth of goods and services with 30 percent [...]
A Rohschach Test in the Middle East
By Donella Meadows
–August 9, 1990–
Iraq’s aggression in the Middle East has provided a big, oily Rohrschach spot, in which we can all read the messages already ingrained in our various psyches and self-interests.
The oil companies see a perfect opportunity not only to raise prices but to insist again that the national interest requires them to drill off our shores and [...]
