Which Future?
By Donella Meadows
–Winter 1995/96–
The following scenarios were developed in detail and with care by an association of systems analysts and representatives of the Protestant church. Hartmut Bossel of the Environmental Systems Research Center at the University of Kassel in Germany, led the team, which considered both the actual dynamic processes going on in the world and their mutual interactions.
Scenario A: [...]
The New Budgeting–Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
By Donella Meadows
–December 29, 1995–
I just came home from business in Europe, where I traveled on the slick new ICE trains, to find that Amtrak budget cuts are about to cancel the two daily passenger trains that connect my valley with the rest of the country.
The European rail network serves every city many times a day; it’s on time to [...]
Two Futures, One Hard, One Easy
By Donella Meadows
–December 28, 1995–
All the progress we’ve seen and all we’re promised for the future — to what is it progressing?
Most of the year we’re so busy turning the wheels of progress that we never step back to ask that question. But come a new year, just four years away from a new millennium, and the thought does arise, [...]
Dear Folks: December 24, 1995
Dear Folks,
Merry Christmas! Or, by the time you get this, Happy New Year!
It’s about 5 PM on Christmas Eve. A very light snow is in the air, the flakes so insubstantial that they get wafted up a few times before they finally settle down. We’ve had three big snowstorms, and there’s more than a foot of white stuff piled up [...]
The Battle of the Riders
By Donella Meadows
–December 21, 1995–
At stake in Washington as the President and Congress go to the mat is more than the deficit, more than Medicare, more than shut-downs of “non-essential” parts of the government. Large chunks of the nation’s natural wealth are also hanging in the balance. So, perhaps, is the disgusting practice of legislative riders.
Riders, like fleas on a [...]
