By Donella Meadows~
Indicators are natural, everywhere, part of everyone’s life. Intuitively we all use indicators to monitor complex systems we need to care about or control. We have many words for indicator – sign, system, omen, signal, tip, clue, grade, rank, data, pointer, dial, warning light, instrument, measurement. Indicators are a necessary part of the stream of information we use [...]
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Indicators and Information Systems for Sustainable Development
By Donella Meadows~
Indicators are natural, everywhere, part of everyone’s life. Intuitively we all use indicators to monitor complex systems we need to care about or control. We have many words for indicator – sign, system, omen, signal, tip, clue, grade, rank, data, pointer, dial, warning light, instrument, measurement. Indicators are a necessary part of the stream of information we use [...]
The Long Wave
By Donella Meadows
–This piece was published in Whole Earth, summer 1998.–
Dozens of people are eager to explain the collapse of the Asian Tiger economies. Few of them predicted it. Other economic implosions, from the 1995 failure of Britain’s venerable Barings Bank to the 1987 dive in the US stock market, have been explained primarily after the fact.
Similarly, the 1994 rise to [...]
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: [...]
Green-Washed Optimism: Reflections
By Donella Meadows
–Fall 1995–
I have before me four reviews of Gregg Easterbrook’s trendy book about the environment, A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism. All the reviews are written by scientists whom I know and respect, and all of them are scathing. The reviewers are more than negative; they’re frustrated, because it isn’t possible to list in [...]
Breaking The Ice
By Donella Meadows
–Summer 1995–
Stunning news from Antarctica arrived last month just before the world’s nations gathered in Berlin to discuss global climate change. It was as if the South Pole had reared its hoary head again, as it did 10 years ago, to galvanize an international agreement.
What happened 10 years ago was the discovery of the enormous ozone hole. That [...]
