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A Compulsive Compromiser Makes a Bad President
By Donella Meadows
–July 21, 1994–
Say there’s something you really want — environmental quality, for example — but you make a compromise. You sacrifice 30 percent in order to get 70 percent.
If you do that twice, you’ve lost half of what you wanted. Do it ten times and you end up with less than 3 percent.
That calculation applies to anything you [...]
Haiti Need Not Remain the Basket Case of the Western Hemisphere
By Donella Meadows
–July 14, 1994–
Poor Haiti. Intractable Haiti. Haiti, oppressed by Papa Doc, Baby Doc, and now a pack of even more rapacious generals. Haiti, the problem that keeps washing up on our shore.
I am hearing some of the most peaceable folks I know, folks who know and love the Haitian land and people, say with great reluctance that it’s [...]
The Land and Water Conservation Fund Needs To Be Spent
By Donella Meadows
–July 9, 1994–
At the edge of my town there’s an open field, kept mowed by a bunch of neighbors who play softball on it. At one wooded edge there’s a picnic bench and a kids’ sandbox. In the woods the land slopes down to a brook that’s deep enough for trout, but shallow enough for children to wade [...]
Fifty Years Later–We Need Another Bretton Woods Conference
By Donella Meadows
–June 30, 1994–
Just weeks after D-Day, while the Allied armies were still battling their way toward Germany, a quieter event occurred that would shape the world as powerfully as the war in Europe.
On July 1, 1944, 730 delegates from 44 nations assembled at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. They stayed three weeks. When they [...]
Biosphere 2 Teaches Us Another Lesson
By Donella Meadows
–June 23, 1994–
Those of us who follow the story of Biosphere 2 not just with interest, but with enthusiasm, weren’t entirely surprised by the recent news stories, but we were puzzled.
According to the April 3 New York Times: “The top six officers of the company that operates the environmental experiment Biosphere 2 were relieved of their duties on [...]
