Silent Spring and The Population Bomb — Can Books or Lives Make Any Difference?
By Donella Meadows
–January 7, 1988–
For middle-aged environmentalists like me this month marks the transition between 1987, the year we celebrated the 25th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and 1988, the year of the 20th anniversary of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb.
I guess most people’s calendars are not dominated by these milestones. But anyone over the age of forty will [...]
Can the World be Fed Without Pesticides
By Donella Meadows
–October 17, 1986–
“We must feed ourselves. To do that, we must have agricultural chemicals. Without them, the world population will starve,” says Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for breeding high-yielding grains.
But thousands of modern, high-yielding farms use no agricultural chemicals at all.
The four Lundberg brothers of Chico, California, have a 2000-acre organic rice farm. Some [...]
Everything in Nature Wants to Eat Apples
By Donella Meadows
–October 9, 1986–
“Apples are wonderful food. Everything in nature wants to eat them. That’s why I have to use pesticides.”
It was late August, and Steve Wood was showing me his crop at Poverty Lane Orchards in Lebanon, N.H. The nearly-ripe apples were covered with a gray residue from the last spray of the season — Guthion against apple [...]
Regulating Pesticides – An Impossible Job
By Donella Meadows
–October 2, 1986–
It’s an old joke that one should never look too closely at how sausage is made or how legislation is passed. That’s also true for how pesticides are regulated.
I began to look too closely when three of my colleagues were working on a pesticide data base. I watched them, asked questions, and learned how the Environmental [...]
Where Do All the Pesticides Go?
By Donella Meadows
–September 25, 1986–
Every year American farmers apply 1.3 million tons of pesticides to their fields.
When pesticides are sprayed by airplane — and 65% of them are — less than half the chemical hits the target field. The rest disintegrates in the air or falls somewhere else. Of the pesticide that does reach the field, far less than one [...]
