Dear Folks: January 23, 1993
Dear Folks,
It’s 4:30 Saturday afternoon and the last act of Meistersinger is coming over the radio from the Met. The daylight is nearly gone. The days are still short, but not as short as they were in Germany, and we’re a month past the solstice. I’m already thinking of spring. The seed packets are arriving in the mail, and I [...]
He’ll Break our Hearts, and We’ll Break His
By Donella Meadows
–January 21, 1993—-
It’s frightening to watch, every four or eight years, how we turn one of ourselves into a president.
At first, while he’s struggling toward the head of his party, we search out his dirty laundry. We blow up every rumor, no matter how unsavory its source, into a topic of national discussion. We view each aspirant with [...]
Taxing What We Don’t Want, Instead of What We Want
By Donella Meadows
–January 14, 1993—-
In spite of the wisecracks we all like to make about government, we know that if we didn’t have one, we would slowly — or maybe not so slowly — devolve to the hapless condition of a Bosnia or Somalia. We need government. So we have to pay for it. So we have to tax something.
But [...]
The Nuclear Power Industry Helps Women Sort Out the Issues
By Donella Meadows
–January 7, 1993–
The U.S. Council for Energy Awareness has finally figured out how to sell nuclear power to women.
Women have always been a problem to the nuclear industry. Polls consistently show them to be more opposed to nuclear power than men. (“Because of their deeply held distrust of science and technology,” the Council for Energy Awareness assumes.) The [...]
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 [...]
