All Global Citizens columns are licensed under a Creative Commons License. DMI encourages you to share this content by following these easy steps.
A Time of Death, a Time of Life
By Donella Meadows
–November 27, 1986–
The shepherd’s new year begins in November. That’s when we bring the sheep up from the pasture, butcher last spring’s lambs and turn the ram in with the ewes to start making next spring’s lambs. The record book closes on one cycle, and the next cycle begins.
I think of late fall as The Time When We [...]
Rotary Takes a Stand for the End of Polio
By Donella Meadows
–November 20, 1986–
When I was a kid the hot summer months were called “polio season”.
I still remember the gusts of fear that swept over our neighborhood whenever one of my playmates came down with stiffness or a fever. Two children I knew actually got polio. One was permanently paralyzed. The other, after months of struggle in an iron [...]
How Much Abuse Can Mother Earth Take
By Donella Meadows
–November 13, 1986–
Last week a spill from a pesticide plant turned the Rhine into a “dead river” the entire length of Germany.
That’s just one of hundreds of human-generated assaults upon the environment. Acid rain falls on Scandinavia. Oil spills destroy the coral reefs of the Red Sea. Air pollution kills vegetation in the Los Angeles basin. Radioactive waste [...]
A Glimpse of Freedom for the World’s Hostages
By Donella Meadows
–November 6, 1986–
With 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world, everyone is a hostage. We are innocent targets, held in constant jeopardy to prevent one group of men from forcing their will upon another group of men. Those men, the ones who control the nuclear weapons, hold not only our bodies and lives in hostage, but our civilization, all [...]
Population Growth – The Last and the Next 35 Years
By Donella Meadows
–October 30, 1986–
The world’s population problem is over. That’s what one would gather from the silence on the subject in the media, in politics, in academic forums.
There never was and never will be a population problem. That is the official position of the Reagan administration.
Population growth is an enormous and worrisome force in the world. That’s what I [...]
