The Battle of the Riders
By Donella Meadows
–December 21, 1995–
At stake in Washington as the President and Congress go to the mat is more than the deficit, more than Medicare, more than shut-downs of “non-essential” parts of the government. Large chunks of the nation’s natural wealth are also hanging in the balance. So, perhaps, is the disgusting practice of legislative riders.
Riders, like fleas on a [...]
How Much Nature Do We Want to Leave?
By Donella Meadows
–November 9, 1995–
At some point the busy human economy will have to stop expanding into wilderness, either because we decide to leave some bit of nature untouched, or because there will be no untouched nature left.
For much of Europe the choice is long past. No place there is wild enough to teach us, as Wendell Berry says, what [...]
Home, Home on the Underpriced, Overgrazed Range
By Donella Meadows
–November 2, 1995–
We the American people are the most generous landowners in the world. We sell gold mines for $5 per acre. We pay people to take from our national forests 800-year-old trees worth $5000 each. And we subsidize ranchers to overgraze our range lands.
About 240 million acres of federal land are leased to private ranchers. The charge [...]
Whose Woods These Are I Think I Know
By Donella Meadows
–October 26, 1995–
“In the administration of the forest reserves it must be clearly borne in mind that all land is to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent good of the whole people, and not for the temporary benefit of individuals or companies.”
So declared Gifford Pinchot when he founded the U.S. Forest Service in 1905. [...]
Giving Away the Gold
By Donella Meadows
–October 19, 1995–
Want to buy a gold mine for five bucks an acre?
Actually you don’t need to buy it. You and I already own it as part of our citizens’ legacy of public land. We’re the ones offering the land at that price, and we’re getting lots of takers. We recently sold a gold deposit in northeast Nevada [...]
