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 [...]
Population Growth – The Last and the Next 35 Years
By Donella Meadows
–October 30, 1986–
The world’s population problem is over. That’s what one would gather from the silence on the subject in the media, in politics, in academic forums.
There never was and never will be a population problem. That is the official position of the Reagan administration.
Population growth is an enormous and worrisome force in the world. That’s what I [...]
The War Between the Eco-Freaks and the Techno-Twits
By Donella Meadows
–June 26, 1986–
The population of the world in 1900 was 1.6 billion. By 1950 it was 2.5 billion. Now it is 5 billion. By the year 2000 the earth will mostly likely have 6.1 billion people.
Some people — let us call them eco-freaks — consider population growth the world’s worst problem. It exacerbates poverty, they say, and degrades [...]
Poverty Causes Population Growth Causes Poverty
By Donella Meadows
–June 19, 1986–
Everywhere in the world, in every kind of culture, the poorest people have the most children.
Does having many children make people poor? Or does being poor make people have many children?
That is a hot question in the continuous struggle over how to spend foreign aid money. Those who think population growth causes poverty advocate programs in [...]
