The Donella Meadows Archive

Junk Mail Myths, Facts, and Creative Ideas

Now that postage rates have gone up and we're all mad, it's time to revisit the subject of junk mail. The problem, I...

score:9, 02/14/1991, ,

Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Pepsi Ad

A company called Space Marketing, Inc. of Roswell, Georgia, has figured out how to send into orbit a reflecting mylar sheet that can create a...

score:9, 07/01/1993, ,

Resisting the Advent of Ads

In the Western world we've built up resistance to the visual, aural, and mental pollution of advertising. We doubt, we laugh, we turn off...

score:9, 10/14/1993, ,

We Are More Than What We Own

It was 1992 and photographer Peter Menzel had been covering oil fires in Kuwait and clan wars in Somalia, when he heard about the wild...

score:9, 03/30/1995, ,

One Quiet Woman Defines the American Dream Her Way

It's unsettling to run into someone who is truly free. It makes you see all the ways in which you yourself are bound. That...

score:9, 07/13/1995, ,

What the American People Really Want

Every day in this crazy cartoon campaign the politicians tell us what the American people want. A 15 percent tax cut. Welfare reform. Education. Whatever...

score:9, 10/24/1996, ,

Don't Be a Turkey on the Day After Thanksgiving

Is there any kind of ad that CBS, NBC, and ABC won't run? Presumably yes -- obscene ads, violent ads, ads for cigarettes and other...

score:9, 11/21/1996, ,

A Week to Kick the Tv Habit

I can just see, ten or twenty years from now, a series of lawsuits that finally force executives of a few immensely profitable companies to...

score:9, 04/17/1997, ,

The Ads Tell the Story of the Universe

You don't expect an unsettling indictment of modern advertising to crop up in a book about the birth of the universe. But there it...

score:9, 05/01/1997, ,

The New American Dream Home

On the cover of the newspaper's Sunday magazine section, THE NEW AMERICAN DREAM HOME invites us to enter its softly lit, splendidly arched, mostly...

score:9, 08/07/1997, ,

You Are Not Your Square Footage

Bill Gates's new mansion comprises 20,000 square feet of living space, with another 20,000 for guest house, sports courts, gardens and garage...

score:9, 01/01/1998, ,

Junk Mail in a Time of Declining Trees

You know how sometimes bits of information come at you from unrelated directions and conk you on the head with an unexpected pattern? It happened...

score:9, 02/05/1998, ,

Here a Vroom, There a Vroom, Everywhere a Vroom Vroom

Snowmobiles continued to vroom unhampered through Yellowstone National Park this winter, though beleaguered park officials had intended to close some of the trails. Environmentalists pounded...

score:9, 03/19/1998, ,

Noise-Making Goop and the Carrying Capacity of the Earth

It was a gorgeous April day, and I was hurrying home, heading for my garden. I stopped for gas, paid inside, walked out, opened the...

score:9, 04/30/1998, ,

The Ski Store and the Real Cost of Fun

A 17-year-old friend convinced me to take her to a ski store on a Saturday afternoon right before the supposed start of the...

score:9, 12/17/1998, ,

Who Needs Germ-Fighting Vacuum Cleaner Bags?

My trusty Electrolux dealer dropped off a box of vacuum cleaner bags the other day. What stopped me from ripping it right open was not...

score:9, 07/15/1999, ,

The World's Top Five Consumers in Many Categories

Singapore, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, United States, Norway. Those are the world's five top nations, in descending order, in -- well, what category would you...

score:9, 08/05/1999, ,

Close Encounters with a Lifetime of Stuff

My heartfelt advice to you: Never Move. If you must move, never move to a place with lots of storage space, such as a farm...

score:9, 12/09/1999, ,

Now Let Us Complain About Catalogs

In what appear to be independent and uncoordinated actions, three friends have brought me three different mail-order catalogs they hate, asking me to condemn...

score:9, 03/23/2000, ,

Kalle Lasn is Mad As Heck and Isn't Going to Take It Any More

Maybe you've seen Adbusters magazine or the Adbusters website with their take-offs on common ads. "Joe Chemo," the popular Joe Camel, sits sad...

score:9, 05/11/2000, ,

Four Not-So-Easy Things You Can Do to Save the Planet

It's wonderful, the burst of publications with lists of things we can do to save the planet. It's great to see so much...

score:8, 06/14/1990, ,

Mad About Ads

The Center for a New American Dream runs an email list (see www.newdream.org) with monthly discussions about consumption -- what we consume and why...

score:8, 11/26/1998, ,

Jozsef Discovers America

"How many telephone equipment there are in this house?" Jozsef asked on his second day in America, his second day in the West. I was...

score:7, 10/01/1987, ,

Many Kinds of Giving

Every now and then come times in life when you have to change your give/take ratio -- when you have to be more of a...

score:7, 12/21/1989, ,

The Secret Life of My Computer

Usually, as I boot up my computer to write this column, I'm thinking about the column, not the computer. Today, though, I've just...

score:7, 03/13/1997, ,