Election Year Lessons about Right and Wrong
By Donella Meadows
–September 1, 1988–
A Supreme Court Justice should not be a former pot smoker. That’s what some outraged people said last fall, as they demanded that nominee Douglas Ginsburg withdraw his candidacy. We can’t have a high national official who has smoked marijuana. What kind of lesson would that be for our children?
There are indeed powerful lessons for our [...]
We Should Prove What to Whom About Acid Rain?
By Donella Meadows
–August 25, 1988–
Every weekday morning this summer, six college students set out from the Ravine Lodge on Mt. Moosilauke in New Hampshire to spend the day measuring trees. They bushwack through the forest to 15 marked plots on the east side of the mountain. Each plot is 20 meters square; some are at low altitude, some medium, some [...]
Dear Folks: August 21, 1988
Dear Folks, I’m starting this letter on a brilliant cool Saturday night just as the sun is setting in a flawless clear sky. We were beginning to think we’d never see such a day again.
The weather forecasters for the past month have been reduced to telling us every day, day after day, that it will be HHH, humid, hot, and hazy, [...]
Real Change — Good or Bad — Takes Longer Than We Think
By Donella Meadows
–August 18, 1988–
After three years of perestroika, the Soviet people still live with shortages of consumer goods. The grain harvest is still inadequate, the meat supply is still here-again, gone-again. The only real change is that front-page stories about the failure of the Gorbachev revolution now run not only in our press, but in theirs.
Those stories demonstrate a [...]
Who wants a President Who’s Gone to a Psychiatrist?
By Donella Meadows
–August 11, 1988–
The rumor was that Michael Dukakis had been treated by a psychiatrist for depression in 1973 after the death of his brother in a hit-and-run accident. No such thing, said his campaign staff. After days of suspense, the Dukakis medical records were released, unblemished by any encounter with a mental health professional. Democrats breathed sighs of [...]
