The New Budgeting–Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
By Donella Meadows
–December 29, 1995–
I just came home from business in Europe, where I traveled on the slick new ICE trains, to find that Amtrak budget cuts are about to cancel the two daily passenger trains that connect my valley with the rest of the country.
The European rail network serves every city many times a day; it’s on time to [...]
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 [...]
Unabomber is Crazy and Dangerous, but Only Partly Wrong
By Donella Meadows
–August 10, 1995–
The Unabomber is a murderer. He is crazy and dangerous. I have no intention of reading his 35,000 word screed against technology and industry. I’ll take the word of those who tell me it is pretentious and repetitious. (I have to read college student papers all the time; I don’t need any more of that kind [...]
Let’s Hang on to the Family Jewels
By Donella Meadows
–July 6, 1995–
I don’t believe that the voters who put the Newtsies in power last fall intended to sell off our national lands and gut our environmental laws. I can’t remember any politician running on a promise to devastate the natural assets of the nation. So we better wake up, folks, because that’s what’s happening.
Here are a few [...]
Pay Me Not to Pollute
By Donella Meadows
–March 9, 1995–
I’m going to turn my farm into a gold mine.
Old rumors about gold circulate around this town. Maybe some of it is under my farm. I plan to blast out the bedrock, grind the rubble, and run cyanide through the grindings to dissolve out the gold. I think I can find as much as $6 million [...]
