The Donella Meadows Archive

Folly in Iran, Folly in Nicaragua

The perfect word for U.S. policy in Iran and Nicaragua is folly. In The March of Folly Barbara Tuchman defines government folly as "the...

score:9, 12/18/1986, ,

Peru's Young President Balances on the High Wire

In the circus of politics, some national leaders are strong-men, some are clowns. Very few are high-wire artists, taking on the most challenging...

score:9, 02/26/1987, ,

Hunger and Surplus Rise and Fall Together

The simultaneous occurrence of hunger and of mountains of surplus food is obscene. It's also expensive. And it's persistent, in spite of hunger...

score:9, 05/07/1987, ,

Rambo Still Rules in the White House

There was reason to hope that after the Iran-contra affair the Administration would deal with foreign policy in a manner a bit less swashbuckling...

score:9, 04/02/1987, ,

A Crack in the Mindset of Nuclear Madness

You could welcome the Reagan-Gorbachev summit as a historic breakthrough. The Intermediate Nuclear Force agreement, the first ever to reduce the nuclear arsenal, may...

score:9, 11/26/1987, ,

A Historic International Agreement on Ozone

There's an old joke that goes like this: if you think the prospect of the end of the world is likely to cause policy...

score:9, 08/08/1987, ,

The Ozone Agreement -- Many Kinds of Heroes

With rejoicing and relief 24 nations and the European Economic Community signed an agreement in Montreal in September to protect the ozone in the earth...

score:9, 10/15/1987, ,

Trading Debt for Nature Instead of Nature for Debt

It is a tragedy, but not an accident, that the world's most threatened tropical forests are in some of the world's poorest and...

score:9, 04/14/1988, ,

Paying the Third World to Save the Ozone Layer

Last week in Geneva the United States positioned itself for the fourth time in six months as an international pariah by refusing to go along...

score:9, 05/17/1990, ,

A New Role for the CIA

Only when a new world order comes into being do we realize how deeply the old order permeated our existence. Nothing could be more welcome...

score:9, 11/29/1990, ,

When Free Traders Win, the Nation Loses

When you call it "free trade," as currently pushed by the presidents of the United States and Mexico, it sounds like something anyone would favor...

score:9, 04/11/1991, ,

An Outrageous Proposal in Preparation for Unced

Next June fifty thousand people will assemble in Brazil for the biggest environmental conference the world has ever seen. About ten thousand of those people...

score:9, 06/20/1991, ,

Beware the Sloshing of Loose Capital

The fashionable solution to the economic woes of a community, state, bank, or nation, is to open its boundaries. The idea is that somehow a...

score:9, 07/25/1991, ,

The Important News is Breaking at U.N. Headquarters

Far more important than Congressional rubber checks, Bill Clinton's love affairs, or even a middle class tax cut, is an event that few reporters...

score:9, 03/26/1992, ,

Ec Come, Ec Go: How Denmark Slowed the Rush Toward European

HOW DENMARK SLOWED THE RUSH TOWARD EUROPEAN UNION In June the 5 million people of Denmark put the brakes on the rushing locomotive that was...

score:9, 09/10/1992, ,

Who Cares Whether George Goes to Rio?

Will George Bush go to the Earth Summit next month in Rio de Janeiro? U.S. politics and media, operating together in their perverse way...

score:9, 05/07/1992, ,

Why It's a Conference on Environment and Development

Reporters are calling it the "Rio Conference" or the "Earth Summit." Properly it is the "United Nations Conference on Environment and Development," abbreviated UNCED, pronounced...

score:9, 05/28/1992, ,

Earth Summit Summary -- Consciousness Precedes Being

Was it all a waste of time, the enormous, contentious Earth Summit? One member of the German delegation summed it up, "Whether Rio was a...

score:9, 06/18/1992, ,

Free Trade Benefits Traders, Not Nations

Wow! The world's largest trading area, populated by 360 million people! A free market from the Yukon to the Yucatan! The latest dramatic chapter...

score:9, 08/27/1992, ,

How One Bit of Your Foreign Aid Money Was Spent

Most Americans, according to opinion polls, believe that huge quantities of their tax dollars go to foreign aid, and that this money is largely wasted...

score:9, 08/25/1993, ,

Why You Shouldn't Ask Economists About Nafta

More than biotechnology or weapons technology, more than any other change in our rapidly changing world, the globalization of the economy is affecting everyone on...

score:9, 09/09/1993, ,

Free Trade Can Work Against the Environment -- or for It

Environmentalists who worry about NAFTA and other trade agreements like to tell the tuna-dolphin story -- though the moral of that story is far from...

score:9, 09/16/1993, ,

First Regulate Sweatshops, Pirates, and Casinos, then Open Trade

What is it about NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) that lines up such a wierd coalition as Jesse Jackson, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan...

score:9, 09/23/1993, ,

Tuning in to Nafta

"I have to admit, I've tuned out the whole discussion about NAFTA," said my neighbor, who is not in the habit of tuning out...

score:9, 09/29/1993, ,

Designing a Nafta That's Good for All the Passengers

The trouble with NAFTA is that it was drafted in secret by corporations and government. Government and corporations should never have unsupervised charge of things...

score:9, 10/07/1993, ,