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Home, Home on the Underpriced, Overgrazed Range
By Donella Meadows
–November 2, 1995–
We the American people are the most generous landowners in the world. We sell gold mines for $5 per acre. We pay people to take from our national forests 800-year-old trees worth $5000 each. And we subsidize ranchers to overgraze our range lands.
About 240 million acres of federal land are leased to private ranchers. The charge [...]
Whose Woods These Are I Think I Know
By Donella Meadows
–October 26, 1995–
“In the administration of the forest reserves it must be clearly borne in mind that all land is to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent good of the whole people, and not for the temporary benefit of individuals or companies.”
So declared Gifford Pinchot when he founded the U.S. Forest Service in 1905. [...]
Giving Away the Gold
By Donella Meadows
–October 19, 1995–
Want to buy a gold mine for five bucks an acre?
Actually you don’t need to buy it. You and I already own it as part of our citizens’ legacy of public land. We’re the ones offering the land at that price, and we’re getting lots of takers. We recently sold a gold deposit in northeast Nevada [...]
What Is Happening to the National Lands?
By Donella Meadows
–October 12, 1995–
There’s a virulent movement in the West and now in the Congress to give federal lands “back” to the states — as if the states had ever owned them.
Of course the original owners were the Native Americans. In the West the Spanish took the lands, then the American people either bought or fought for them. Those [...]
Politicians Have No Idea What People Really Want
By Donella Meadows
–October 5, 1995–
I should be writing about how the grinches in Congress are trying to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act, or about their latest tricks for stomping on the poor while handing the nation’s resources to the rich, or about their lack of interest in hearing public comment on these depredations.
But I get tired of being outraged. No [...]
