Nancy and the October Surprise
By Donella Meadows
–April 25, 1991–
I have watched for ten years as rumors about the October surprise have started up and disappeared and started up again. Over the same time there have also been a lot of rumors about Nancy Reagan.
Both kinds of rumors have recently surfaced again. What I can’t understand is why the talk and the press are all [...]
Dear Folks: April 21, 1991
Dear Folks, It’s a gray Sunday morning, pouring rain onto fields of new grass that are almost blindingly green. The countryside is in its green-brown stage; the upper stories are still unleafed, but the ground is pushing up succulent biomass so fast that it satisfies even the hungry mouths of the lactating ewes and their lambs. In the front yard the [...]
Environmental News Proves No One Right or Wrong
By Donella Meadows
–April 18, 1991–
You may have seen the recent and ominous headlines: SCIENTISTS FIND OZONE DISAPPEARING FASTER THAN EXPECTED. OZONE LOSS RAISES RISK OF CANCER.
Is this news terrible, or simply bad? What does it mean?
Some of the more excitable environmentalists say it means they have been right all along. The human race is unravelling the earth’s systems. We must [...]
When Free Traders Win, the Nation Loses
By Donella Meadows
–April 11, 1991–
When you call it “free trade,” as currently pushed by the presidents of the United States and Mexico, it sounds like something anyone would favor. But when a noted World Bank economist calls it “individualism riding roughshod over community interests,” you start having second thoughts.
The following story of Watsonville was told by Alexander Cockburn in The [...]
Plus or Minus Two Hundred Billion Dollars
By Donella Meadows
–April 4, 1991–
There are two reasons, says our President, why the U.S. need not make an effort to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide:
The models that predict greenhouse warming are imperfect.
Cutting back would cost too much. A 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide output would cost the nation $200 billion a year — about the amount [...]
