All Global Citizens columns are licensed under a Creative Commons License. DMI encourages you to share this content by following these easy steps.
Trade on the Fast Track — What’s the Hurry?
By Donella Meadows
–November 13, 1997–
There were plenty of bad reasons why Congress turned down President Clinton’s “fast track” trade bill — the normal “do anything to humiliate Clinton” stuff, payoffs from protectionists and labor, isolationists who fear trade because they fear the world.
But there were good reasons, too, strengthened by the fact that NAFTA, the free trade agreement with Mexico, [...]
People of Wealth Stand Up for Greater Equality
By Donella Meadows
–November 6, 1997–
The other day a friend sent me a brochure put out by an organization called Responsible Wealth. I could hardly believe the name. Reading on, I could hardly believe what it stands for.
“We are business leaders and wealthy individuals, among the top five percent of income earners and asset holders in the US,” the brochure leads [...]
A Building Can be a Teacher
By Donella Meadows
–October 30, 1997–
David Orr, head of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College, understands that young people learn from everything they do and everything around them. Even buildings.
So he started thinking about the structure in which he conducts his classes. “It is a building with lots of squareness and straight lines,” he wrote in a recent article in [...]
The Greenhouse Problem as Seen by Europe and the U.S.
By Donella Meadows
–October 23, 1997–
Listening to climate change talk in the U.S. and in Europe, I have to wonder whether we’re all living on the same planet.
Several European governments have detailed plans for cutting their economies’ 1990 fossil fuel use (hence emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide) by 15 or 20 percent by the year 2005.
Meanwhile the U.S. president [...]
We Can Do Something About Population by Doing Something About Poverty
By Donella Meadows
–October 16, 1997–
When you hear talk about what to do with all the garbage, what to do about traffic, health care, urban sprawl, hunger — almost any kind of people-related problem — sooner or later you hear someone say that the real trouble is population growth.
Everyone sighs, agrees and changes the subject. Nothing can be done about population [...]
