Prophets of Depression Are Without Honor in Any Country
By Donella Meadows
–October 22, 1987–
Back in the booming 1920s, when Wall Street was the glamor capital of the world, when the rich were getting much richer and the poor were invisible, when a conservative government was cutting taxes, when people were inventing ingenious ways to spend money they didn’t have, and when the only conceivable direction was up, one person [...]
Dear Folks, October 20, 1987
Dear Folks, Here I sit before the same little old McIntosh computer, set upon the same pine desk that John Zimmer made me, with the same piles of unfiled papers in the background, under the serene gaze of the same imperturbable Buddha that Chirapol Sintunawa gave me (the Buddha sits on top of the computer and reminds me to Type the [...]
The Ozone Agreement — Many Kinds of Heroes
By Donella Meadows
–October 15, 1987–
With rejoicing and relief 24 nations and the European Economic Community signed an agreement in Montreal in September to protect the ozone in the earth’s stratosphere. The negotiations were long and difficult, but as they went on, nation-states and multinational corporations behaved in an increasingly civilized, cooperative, forward-looking way. It was enough to make one believe [...]
A Catalog for Eco-Consumers
By Donella Meadows
–October 8, 1987–
A year ago I wrote in a column that if every light bulb in the United States were replaced with the most energy-efficient equivalent now available, we could save enough electricity to shut down half the nuclear power plants in the nation. I should have anticipated all the letters that came in, asking where to get [...]
Jozsef Discovers America
By Donella Meadows
–October 1, 1987–
“How many telephone equipment there are in this house?” Jozsef asked on his second day in America, his second day in the West.
I was embarrassed to answer. Two weeks earlier I had been in Hungary at the home of one of Jozsef’s colleagues, another professor of economics at Budapest’s Karl Marx University. It was a gracious [...]
