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What’s Wrong With the Schools?
By Donella Meadows
–March 6, 1997–
Maybe it’s just that I was a kid, but I remember my public school in a middle-class Midwest town as the center of community life. Everyone seemed to show up for band concerts and basketball games and PTA meetings. Teachers were decently paid and honored in the community. Taxpayers, much poorer than the average today, took [...]
Sludge By Any Other Name Can Still Be A Problem
By Donella Meadows
–February 20, 1997–
“Biosolids” is what they call it now. It used to be called “sludge.” By any name, it comes out of a sewage treatment plant, and here in the countryside it can cause raging battles.
Wastewater treatment managers, who have tons and tons of the stuff to get rid of, like to spread it on forests or fields. [...]
More Justice for Chemicals Than for Presidents
By Donella Meadows
–February 19, 1997–
In this country not only do we hold people innocent until proven guilty, we do the same for chemicals. Their behavior may be suspect, they may be found regularly at the scenes of crimes, they may fail their lab tests, but still we let them go free — indeed we multiply, spread, and circulate them — [...]
Beyond Bipartisanship
By Donella Meadows
–February 13, 1997–
“Bipartisanship” is the in-word in Washington. What it appears to mean is compromise. Everyone stays stuck in ideology, sniping at the other side a bit more quietly, while deals are made. Cut Medicare more than the Democrats want but less than the Republicans want. Throw just enough people off welfare to appease the right without too [...]
How a Public Health Story Becomes an Industry Legend
By Donella Meadows
–February 7, 1997–
If the name Alar means anything to you, it probably means something related to apples and Meryl Streep and hysterical environmentalists.
Those mental associations have been nurtured in us by industry-funded public relations groups, who repeat over and over the claim that the “Alar scare” was deliberate hype, which alarmed the public unnecessarily and caused irreparable harm [...]
