A Week to Kick the TV Habit
By Donella Meadows
–April 17, 1997–
I can just see, ten or twenty years from now, a series of lawsuits that finally force executives of a few immensely profitable companies to admit that their product is addictive. They have always known that their business damages people and society. They manipulate its content to make it even more habit-forming and destructive. And they [...]
The Land Doesn’t Put the Kids in the Schools
By Donella Meadows
–April 10, 1997–
Vermont is in a tizzy over a set of gnarled-together problems that plague every state — schools, land, property tax.
I don’t suppose any place can boast of a happy solution to school funding or land taxes. Most of us live with a set of compromises that endure only out of habit. No one questions the status [...]
Industry Could Be a Clean Air Good Guy
By Donella Meadows
–April 3, 1997–
If the EPA carries out its plan to strengthen the Clean Air Act, that will be the end of Fourth of July fireworks.
Backyard barbecues will be banned.
You will probably lose your job.
The economy will crash.
All for a few asthmatic kids, who should just stay inside on smoggy days.
So industry ads and spokespersons are saying. It’s astonishing. [...]
Millennium, Shmillennium
By Donella Meadows
–March 27, 1997–
On April 6 it will be 1000 DAYS TILL THE YEAR 2000!!! There will be press conferences and a global sing-along. Countdown clocks will be set ticking, aimed for the turning of the millennium.
(Purists will point out that the actual millennial change will occur on January 1, 2001. They will keep saying that for the next [...]
Dear Folks: March 23, 1997
Hi Folks! It’s early Sunday morning, frosty outside — 10 degrees, deep crusted snow. We’re having a classic March, which means snowy and stormy. The sun, when it shines, pours down heartening warmth. But then clouds roll in, and a blizzard dumps another load of white stuff.
Last week I got caught driving up from Boston in one of those blizzards. Snow, [...]
