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The 2000 Election in the Cool Light of History
by Donella Meadows
— December 7, 2000 —
The crowds demonstrating outside Florida courtrooms and counting rooms have been reminding me of the historical opera “Boris Godounov.” It opens with peasants milling about, waiting to find out who will be their next tsar. Every now and then a handler comes out and whips them up to yell for Boris, who is not [...]
No Point In Waiting Around For Leadership
by Donella Meadows
— November 30,2000 —
The most earth-shaking event of the past two weeks had to do with leadership, or lack thereof, but it did not unfold in Florida. It happened in the Netherlands. The stunning lack of leadership came from the Clinton/Gore administration.
The meeting in the Hague was the sixth attempt since the Kyoto conference of 1997 to forge [...]
Things Are Getting Better Or Worse, Depending On What You Count
by Donella Meadows
— November 23, 2000 —
Every month I get a kind of Readers Digest for people interested in the future. It’s called Future Survey, issued by the World Future Society. Each month it contains about 50 extended summaries of recent publications about the paths — economic, environmental, social — we seem to be following.
The November 2000 issue, for example, [...]
The Power of a Vote
by Donella Meadows
— November 16, 2000 —
What is it we are learning in the aftermath of this crazy election? How powerful a single vote can be?
Or how worthless a single vote can be, when 19,000 of them can be tossed out in one county? When boxes of ballots get lost? When recounts are demanded or stopped depending on their expected [...]
A Message To New Leaders From A Fallen Giant
by Donella Meadows
— November 9, 2000 —
During the weekend before Election Day, as midgets battled furiously on warped playing fields, two giants fell, both yielding their lives peacefully, knowingly, with dignity, to cancer.
The better-known one was David Brower, the great outdoorsman and thunderer for the environment. Even in his seventies and eighties he was still shaking up the Sierra Club, [...]
