Words for a Sustainable World
By Donella Meadows
–January 6, 1994–
Back in the 1970s when my feminist friends said they felt excluded by the word “man” — as in “the future of man” — I thought they were making a fuss over nothing.
But it was easy enough to say “people” or “humanity” instead of “man,” so I did, and gradually my gender-deafness turned into sensitivity. I [...]
Dear Folks: August 22, 1993
Dear Folks,
The calm before the storm. I leave on Wednesday for Budapest and the Balaton meeting — always the high point and most exhausting week of my year — a week when I’m with 50 of my closest partners and best friends from around the world and it seems a shame to waste time sleeping — a 50-ring circus of [...]
Seattle Citizens Define Their Own Dow-Jones Average
By Donella Meadows
–May 20, 1993–
Last June an unlikely bunch of people got together in Seattle — a Boeing executive, an Episcopal priest, a city councilman, citizen activists for everything from the environment to minority rights, a high school teacher, a union representative, a local television personality, and about 100 more. They called themselves the Sustainable Seattle Civic Panel. Sustainability for [...]
Producing like there is a tomorrow: Patagonia mixes low growth with high ideals
By Donella Meadows
–Winter 1993–
There’s an astonishing page in the latest Patagonia sports clothing catalog, written by Yvon Chouinard, president of Patagonia, Inc. It tells why he’s decided that his company should stop growing.
“Last fall,” he says, “we underwent an environmental audit to investigate the impact of the clothing we make…. To no one’s surprise the news is bad. Everything we [...]
Beyond The Limits To Growth
By Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers
–Summer 1992–
“Grow or die,” goes the old economic maxim. But in 1972 a team of systems scientists and computer modelers challenged conventional wisdom with a ground-breaking study that warned that there were limits – especially environmental limits – to how “big” human civilization and its appetite for resources could get. Beyond a certain [...]
