A New Energy Analysis, An Old Energy Policy
By Donella Meadows
–January 30, 1991–
The energy policy the nation has been waiting for — and, some would say, fighting for — is about to be unveiled by the Bush administration. It contains no surprises. It emphasizes supply more than efficiency. It calls for market mechanisms, not regulation or taxes. Oil, coal, and nuclear companies will find nothing in it to [...]
Nuclear Weapons Have Never Been so Dangerous
By Donella Meadows
–November 15, 1990–
Two months ago another piece of the Soviet Union became an ecological disaster zone. A nuclear fuel plant exploded, releasing a cloud of toxic beryllium over Ust-Kamenogorsk, a city of 300,000 people near the Chinese border.
In this country we are just beginning to understand that the Soviet Union practices advanced industrial technologies with a primitive level [...]
What We don’t Know About the Budget isn’t Easy to Find Out
By Donella Meadows
–November 1, 1990–
“I never knew that, about rich people not paying Social Security tax on all their income,” an outraged friend told me last week.
Said another equally angry friend a few days later, “That income tax bubble, I didn’t know about that. How could they DO it?”
They could do it because intelligent, busy people like my friends didn’t [...]
Seeing Ourselves as our Neighbors See Us
By Donella Meadows
–August 3, 1989–
Lots of Canadians read Time every week, but few Americans read Maclean’s, and that’s a shame. If we took the time to see the world as our northern neighbors see it, we could learn something. We could learn how we ourselves look to our closest and most sympathetic, but independent and sometimes critical, observers. We could [...]
Waking up from Eight Years of Illusion
By Donella Meadows
–January 19, 1989–
“If you let me write $200 billion a year in hot checks, I’ll give you an illusion of prosperity too,” said Lloyd Bentsen in last fall’s campaign. The question is what the nation will discover, when the illusion has passed and the real economic situation is reckoned. The time for that reckoning seems to be now.
Though [...]
