Lawless Logging
By Donella Meadows
–April 25, 1996–
If you live in a city, you may never have heard of the “salvage rider” If you live near a national forest, you may be watching in helpless fury as it turns protected stands of ancient trees into slash and erosion.
Where I live, in the widespread community of people who try to keep an eye on [...]
How to Add Twelve Years to Your Life
By Donella Meadows
–April 18, 1996–
The average American spends more than 4 hours a day watching television.
Four hours a day, 28 hours a week, 1456 hours a year. That’s 60 days — two months! If you keep it up for a 72-year lifetime, you will spend twelve years in front of the tube. Assuming 8 hours of sleep a night, that’s [...]
What I Can Be, IF I Don’t Watch TV
By Donella Meadows
–April 11, 1996–
I can see how television could be addicting. When I stay at a hotel, I can waste a whole evening surfing all those channels, letting nonstop idiocy wash over me, too lazy, too hooked, too amazed to hit the off switch. When I finally come to my senses, first I feel terrible about devoting hours of [...]
Repeating History in the Forests
By Donella Meadows
–April 4, 1996–
History has been written by people who are much more interested in people than in nature or how people and nature interact. So history books tell us about kings and commanders, economies and wars, but little about the forests, waters, soils and mines over which, sometimes, the wars were fought, and from which, always, the economies, [...]
We Walk On Earth With Big Feet
By Donella Meadows
–March 28, 1996–
Picture a city, with skyscrapers, roads, cars, towers, lights all jammed together. Now picture a huge, bare human foot reaching down from the city, stepping on the earth, crushing daisies.
That’s the image William Rees, professor of planning at the University of British Columbia, instills in the minds of his students. He calls it the Ecological Footprint, [...]
