The Donella Meadows Archive

Is the Future Our Choice or Fate?

I was one of the team of people at MIT who wrote a book that created a worldwide burst of media foreboding. It began as a small report to the Club of Rome....

score:9, 12/31/1969, ,

Have We Reached the Limits to Growth?

As environmental problems make the headlines again, people who remember The Limits to Growth have been asking me, "Were your predictions right? Ozone hole, acid...

score:9, 01/15/1989, ,

Have We Finally Come to the Limits to Growth?

In 1972 I co-authored a book called The Limits to Growth, which raised what was to me a surprising ruckus. The book was based...

score:9, 09/09/1988, ,

When the Stock Market Goes up and the Economy Doesn't

Why is the stock market shooting up while the economy is in the doldrums? As usual with questions about economics, you can find someone to...

score:9, 02/19/1987, ,

Have We Finally Come to the Limits to Growth?

In 1972 during a time of environmental concern I co-authored a book called The Limits to Growth. It raised a ruckus for awhile, and...

score:9, 09/09/1988, ,

The Tragedy of the Commons on Georges Bank, and Elsewhere

In the Massachusetts State Capitol there is a wooden statue of the Sacred Cod, a tribute to the massive fishing ground called Georges Bank. For...

score:9, 12/01/1988, ,

Nothing is So Powerful As an Exponential Whose Time Has Come

The reason environmentalists are often so gloomy is that they know what the word "exponential" means. "A lack of appreciation for what exponential increase really...

score:9, 06/16/1989, ,

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:9, 07/18/1991, ,

We Can't Go on Growing This Way

Twenty years ago there were 3.6 billion people in the world. Now there are 5.5 billion. In another twenty years, according to United...

score:9, 04/02/1992, ,

Over the Speed Limits

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds," said Aldo Leopold more than forty years...

score:9, 04/09/1992, ,

Accelerating with a Foggy Window on an Icy Road

The human population grows by 95 million people a year and degrades its fertile land by 64 million acres a year. Any moderately intelligent Martian...

score:9, 04/16/1992, ,

What Does Sustainability Mean?

As the world prepares for the Earth Summit in June, the global buzz-word is "sustainability." Governments and people are working not only to define...

score:9, 04/23/1992, ,

There Are Limits to Growth, but No Limits to Love

From corporate boardrooms to primary classrooms to the World Bank to the poorest villages, people know that the human economy is taking too great a...

score:9, 04/30/1992, ,

Going Too Far

When she was 16, Breezy Osborne suggested that her father Jennings string up some Christmas lights on their million-dollar house in Little Rock, Arkansas...

score:9, 12/16/1993, ,

We Can't Load Everything Onto the Land

I'm just back from a meeting of forest products companies in which everyone was enthusing about fiber that doesn't come from forests. Proud...

score:9, 08/08/1996, ,

The Real Costs of Growth in Oregon

The myth persists. Growth is good for us. Development will bring in more tax money. The only way to get our property taxes down is...

score:9, 06/05/1997, ,

All the Nations Can't Feed Themselves, but All the People Can Be Fed

In the "developing countries" there were 1.7 billion people in 1950. Now there are 3.6 billion. There will be 4.9 billion by...

score:8, 04/09/1987, ,

Twenty Years of Destruction and Progress

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...

score:6, 12/05/1991, ,