So is the Earth Warming or Isn’t it?
By Donella Meadows
–April 26, 1990–
With an aha! gotcha! flourish a skeptical reader sent me a recent news release about global warming. “Scientists who analyzed 10 years of weather satellite data found no evidence that the earth has warmed from the so-called greenhouse effect,” it said. “The northern hemisphere goes up slightly during those 10 years and the southern hemisphere goes [...]
A New Materials System Arises in Fits and Starts
By Donella Meadows
–April 19, 1990–
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans are proving not only able but willing to separate their garbage. In fact we’re becoming such ferocious recyclers that old newspapers are piling up by the ton with no place to go.
As the market for used newsprint crashes, some recyclers are getting discouraged, and some purveyors of conventional wisdom are saying, [...]
The Third Great Revolution
By Donella Meadows
–April 12, 1990–
Earth Day is at its best at the neighborhood level with nature hikes and trash pickups — but it’s bigger than that. It features resounding speeches by politicians, some of them sincere, but it’s bigger than that too. Every school in Thailand is planting a tree; every church in Costa Rica is giving an earth sermon; [...]
The Lessons of Exxon Valdez
By Donella Meadows
–April 5, 1990–
A year after the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez, the nation is busy Drawing Lessons. What can we conclude from this worst-ever-yet accident of the petroleum industry in the United States? What, if anything, ought to be done so that no such disaster ever happens again?
The oil industry seems to have taken for its lesson [...]
There’s Only so Much Room in the Rumen
By Donella Meadows
–March 29, 1990–
In Wisconsin dairy farmers are picketing and lobbyists are circling, while the governor decides whether to sign a temporary ban on bovine growth hormone (BGH).
Monsanto executives have descended into Vermont in corporate jets to contest the decision that milk produced with BGH shall not be allowed in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
In New Hampshire a moratorium [...]
