Depopulation Is Not a Problem: Population Growth Is
By Donella Meadows
–September 29, 1988–
“If we don’t change our direction,” says a Chinese proverb, “we’ll end up where we are headed.” If population trends continue to unfold the way they’ve been going, the world population will grow from five billion to eight billion over the next 35 years. Ninety percent of that growth will occur in the Third World.
Over the [...]
Dear Folks: September 25, 1988
Dear Folks, It’s the beginning of Glory Season here. The fields and the edges of the woods are already red with sumac and virginia creeper, mixed with the yellow of late goldenrod. The white pines are half-green, half-gold. Their needles last two years — so the second-year needles are about the fall off. Every time the wind blows, a swirl of [...]
The Population Bomb has not Stopped Ticking
By Donella Meadows
–September 22, 1988–
“Every human society is faced with not one population problem but with two,” said Margaret Mead. “How to beget and rear enough children, and how not to beget and rear too many.”
We don’t hear much about either of these problems lately, but they haven’t gone away. The world population will grow by roughly 85 million people [...]
Have We Finally Come to the Limits of Growth?
By Donella Meadows
–September 9, 1988–
In 1972 I co-authored a book called The Limits to Growth, which raised what was to me a surprising ruckus. The book was based on a computer model of global population and economic growth. It said, in essence, that the kinds and rates of growth we’re accustomed to cannot go on forever, or even very much [...]
What Americans Don’t Understand About the Soviet Union
By Donella Meadows
–September 9, 1988–
“You know I write newspaper columns,” I said to my friend Alexei, who is a Soviet economist. “How about helping me with my next one? What would you like to say to the American people?”
His eyes lit up. He pulled me over to a park bench where no one was likely to overhear. Nowadays Soviet people [...]
