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Twenty Years of Destruction and Progress
By Donella Meadows
–December 5, 1991–
Twenty years ago I would have been writing this column on a manual typewriter. Today I’m writing it on a laptop computer that fits inside my briefcase with room to spare. The computing power of this little laptop would have occupied a space as large as my office 20 years ago.
I’ve been using the computer to [...]
Things Fall Apart; The Center Cannot Hold
By Donella Meadows
–November 28, 1991–
Every now and then I hear something in the news that reminds me of the chilling poem “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats. Usually the triggering event is a period of utter chaos in some distant part of the world:
Vietnam, Cambodia, Uganda, the Middle East.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the [...]
Nature is More than a Commodity
By Donella Meadows
November 21, 1991
One of the main problems of the market system, every economist knows, is that it doesn’t put a price on nature.
Brazilian cattle barons who burn down tropical forest for temporary pasture never compare the value of beef exports to the full value of the standing forest. U.S. developers can pick up a swamp for a song; [...]
An Introduction to American Politics for Melinda
By Donella Meadows
–November 14, 1991–
Welcome, Melinda, to the United States. Your Hungarian university sent you here to practice English, and since you’ve arrived at the beginning of a presidential election season, you’ll also get to see “democracy” in action. I know people in your country are very interested in democracy, so I’ll do the best I can to explain it [...]
What on Earth to do About Population?
By Donella Meadows
–November 7, 1991–
The World Bank has just raised its projection for the population of the world by another billion. The population will level off toward the end of the next century, says the Bank, not at 11.5 billion as previously thought, but at 12.5 billion.
That item didn’t make the news, although there could hardly be tidings of greater [...]
