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The Third Great Revolution
By Donella Meadows
–April 12, 1990–
Earth Day is at its best at the neighborhood level with nature hikes and trash pickups — but it’s bigger than that. It features resounding speeches by politicians, some of them sincere, but it’s bigger than that too. Every school in Thailand is planting a tree; every church in Costa Rica is giving an earth sermon; [...]
The Lessons of Exxon Valdez
By Donella Meadows
–April 5, 1990–
A year after the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez, the nation is busy Drawing Lessons. What can we conclude from this worst-ever-yet accident of the petroleum industry in the United States? What, if anything, ought to be done so that no such disaster ever happens again?
The oil industry seems to have taken for its lesson [...]
There’s Only so Much Room in the Rumen
By Donella Meadows
–March 29, 1990–
In Wisconsin dairy farmers are picketing and lobbyists are circling, while the governor decides whether to sign a temporary ban on bovine growth hormone (BGH).
Monsanto executives have descended into Vermont in corporate jets to contest the decision that milk produced with BGH shall not be allowed in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
In New Hampshire a moratorium [...]
The Grass Doesn’t Pay the Clouds for the Rain
By Donella Meadows
–March 22, 1990–
“In the current vocabulary of condemnation there are few words as final and conclusive as the word ‘uneconomic’,” wrote E.F. Schumacher in Small is Beautiful. “Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations; as long as you [...]
Our GNP is up; Our Welfare is Down
By Donella Meadows
–March 8, 1990–
Are you better off than you were ten years ago?
The government says you are — or at any rate the average American is. The per capita GNP (Gross National Product), our most widely watched and quoted economic index, rose every year during the 1980’s except the recession year of 1982.
But two researchers, Herman Daly, Senior Economist [...]
