Immigration Tears the Sierra Club Apart
By Donella Meadows
–April 2, 1998–
Given our history, our beneficent self-image, and the fact that we are nearly all descendants of immigrants, Americans get emotional about immigration. So the Sierra Club is in trouble.
As early as 1970, the Club resolved to “bring about stabilization of the population first of the United States and then of the world.” In 1989 it stated [...]
We Don’t Need New Ideas; We Just Need to Stop Having Old Ones
By Donella Meadows
–March 26, 1998–
When I got off the plane in Amsterdam last Saturday, I walked across the terminal to a clean, efficient train system that could take me to anywhere in Europe. I was headed for Groningen in north Holland. I didn’t have to wait long; trains to the north come through every half hour.
Why don’t we have a [...]
Dear Folks: March 23, 1998
March 23, 1998, North Holland
Dear Folks, I’m on a train somewhere between Groningen and Amsterdam, looking out at early spring in the incredibly fertile Dutch countryside. Forsythia are in full bloom, and ornamental plum trees with delicate pink blossoms, and narcissus. The canals and ditches are swollen with spring rain. Very round sheep are grazing everywhere, few lambs, but it looks like [...]
Here a Vroom, There a Vroom, Everywhere a Vroom, Vroom
By Donella Meadows
–March 19, 1998–
Snowmobiles continued to vroom unhampered through Yellowstone National Park this winter, though beleaguered park officials had intended to close some of the trails.
Environmentalists pounded for trail closure. Their ostensible purpose was to prevent bison from following machine-packed paths out of the park. But they had other reasons. On winter weekends the exhaust from thousands of two-stroke [...]
Living on Sun, Water, Wind, Grass, and Community
By Donella Meadows
–March 12, 1998–
Nearly everyone who has been to the solar village Gaviotas, east of the Andes in Colombia, calls it a utopia. But it isn’t, says Paolo Lugari, its founder. That word means in Greek “no place.” Gaviotas has existed, however improbably, for more than 30 years now. Lugari says it’s a “topia” — simply a place.
When he [...]
