The Water is Someone’s Home
By Donella Meadows
–May 23, 1996–
“What difference does it make?” a student asked me the other day, when I was talking about ways to use less water. “Water is a renewable resource. It isn’t a pollutant. Who cares how much I use?”
He saw about as far as the average citizen sees into his own environmental impact — the immediate [...]
What Happened to the Geographer?
By Donella Meadows
–May 16, 1996–
May is “sweeps month” in the world of commercial television. Sample counts of how many people watch which programs determine advertising rates for the coming season. It’s a time when network news programs get splashy and move their anchors around the world. Last week NBC’s “Today” was broadcast from Ireland. This week ABC’s “Good Morning America” [...]
The Republican Rider and the Mt. Graham Squirrel
By Donella Meadows
–May 9, 1996–
Mount Graham soars ten thousand feet out of the Arizona desert. As it rises its slopes get cooler and moister, until on its peak a forest grows. Biologists call that forest a “sky island,” a 615-acre scrap of never-logged Engelmann spruce and Douglas fir. Below it are transition zones of heavily cut forest interrupted by roads, [...]
Too Many Shriveled Scrooges in the National Budget Process
By Donella Meadows
–May 2, 1996–
The Washington budget battle, which shut down the government twice and kept parts of it limping along without proper funding for seven months, has finally been resolved. The fight was about balancing the budget sometime off in the future, or so they said.
But the year-2002 numbers they were arguing about were sheer guesses. The loudest “budget [...]
Dear Folks: April 28, 1996
Dear Folks, It’s a slow spring. I haven’t even got the peas in the ground yet; the garden’s too muddy. We had a frost last night. The top of Mount Ascutney, visible from our front door, is still white with snow. The rivers are surging with a combination of snowmelt and heavy rain.
And — an amazing sign — this morning I [...]
