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Economics for Four-Year-Olds
by Elizabeth Sawin
— March 31, 2002 —
My four-year-old daughter spent the afternoon at a local science museum the other day, exploring an exhibit on biodiversity. She returned home full of determination, found pencil and paper, and composed a letter. Now she distributes copies to friends and strangers alike. The letter begins:
From Jenna to the world.
Please stop making all this pollution. [...]
A Truly Sophisticated Economy Would Pursue More Than One Goal
by Elizabeth Sawin
— March 1, 2002 —
I have a young friend who, I think, will never eat another banana without knowing a great deal about its history.
On a trip to Belize, Hannah and other homeschooled teenagers saw monkeys, the rainforest, and Mayan villages. But the memory that seems to stand out the most vividly is of a banana plantation.
The workers [...]
Smarter Agriculture For the Sake of Land and People
by Hal Hamilton
— March 1, 2002 —
If you stand just outside the system of commodity agriculture and look in, the wasted opportunities are easy to see. Here at Sustainability Institute we use simulation models, but a drive down country roads is really all that’s needed. You see farmers investing in short-term productivity but rarely in long-term soil fertility. In the [...]
Taking on the Erosive Cycle of Money and Political Power
by Elizabeth R. Sawin
— February 4, 2002 —
Every day I try to protect my children from problems I didn’t create and cannot solve alone. I spread creams on their skin to shield them from the UV radiation that sneaks in through our thinned ozone layer. I try to feed them food free of pesticides and hormones, but I know their [...]
The Perversity of Farm Bills
by Hal Hamilton and Elizabeth Sawin
— February 1, 2002 —
Right now Congress is trying to hatch a new Farm Bill. But like every congress charged with writing farm policy for the past fifty years, the legislature is ignoring an important reality — farm policy keeps on delivering less of what we want and more of what we don’t want. Congress [...]
