The Donella Meadows Archive

Not Seeing the Forest for the Dollar Bills

The Fish and Wildlife Service has finally declared the spotted owl an endangered species. The decision will, if the administration enforces the law of the...

score:18, 06/28/1990, ,

When All Nature Flows Through Human Hands

In 1986 a group of ecologists at Stanford published a paper in the journal Bioscience that made scientists' hair stand on end. They calculated that...

score:18, 07/18/1991, ,

Lumber Company Journalism

The newspapers are scapegoating again -- or rather scapeowling. Lumber prices have shot up. One month ago a federal judge halted logging licenses in old-growth...

score:18, 07/04/1991, ,

Miracles from Nature Take a Long Time to Develop

Some people say that the discovery of a cancer cure in the Pacific yew is a perfect example of why we should save ancient forests...

score:18, 03/12/1992, ,

The Environment President Whittles Away the National Parks

One of the many performance records George Bush would rather we didn't focus on between now and the coming election is the degradation under...

score:18, 09/03/1992, ,

The New Forest Plan -- an Uncontrolled Experiment

The press conference announcing the government's plan for the National Forests of the Pacific Northwest was a classic example of the art of David...

score:18, 07/08/1993, ,

The Water is Someone's Home

"What difference does it make?" a student asked me the other day, when I was talking about ways to use less water. "Water is a...

score:18, 05/23/1996, ,

You Can't Live on the Pond and Have the Pond

Les Kaufman called me from the Boston University Marine Program, sputtering about Title Five. "How do you get people to care about little brown fish...

score:18, 07/06/1996, ,

Something There is That Doesn"t Love a Clearcut

You have to be well trained by a forestry school or well paid by a lumber company to see beauty in a clearcut. If you...

score:18, 10/31/1996, ,

The Environmental Legend and the Real Tongass

There's such a difference between knowing something in your head and experiencing it directly with your whole self. I've known about the Tongass...

score:18, 08/27/1998, ,

Song for the Bluefin Tuna

Carl Safina is a fanatic fisherman. He's especially fanatic about ocean fish, which got him interested in seabirds, which got him into serious biology...

score:18, 04/22/1999, ,

The Senator, the President, and the Sea Lion

The drama of the presidential election, they say, has awakened the interest of the public, and especially of young people, in the democratic process. So...

score:18, 12/21/2000, ,

Overdue Thanks to the Soil Bugs

With a Thanksgiving feast spread before you, it's easy to be thankful -- for the food, for those who produced it from the farmers to...

score:15, 11/16/1989, ,