The Donella Meadows Archive

Hands Across White River Junction

The official Hands Across America line passed 200 miles south of Vermont, but people up here wanted to express their concern for the homeless and...

score:9, 05/29/1986, ,

Poverty Causes Population Growth Causes Poverty

Everywhere in the world, in every kind of culture, the poorest people have the most children. Does having many children make people poor? Or does...

score:9, 06/19/1986, ,

Two Stories and a Whole Bunch of Morals

Here are two simple stories for the holiday season and a question. The question is, what is the moral? What point do these stories make...

score:9, 12/25/1986, ,

Three Million Pounds of Food a Month

Four years ago Lee Stuart was in San Diego working on her Ph.D. in systems ecology. Now Dr. Lee Stuart lives in the Bronx...

score:9, 03/05/1987, ,

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:9, 04/09/1987, ,

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, ,

What Would the World Be Like if There Were No Hunger?

About one out of every eight persons on earth is chronically hungry. The daily death toll from hunger is around 35,000 people, equivalent to...

score:9, 12/17/1987, ,

A Decade Lost, when There Isn't a Decade to Lose

It has been possible to accept, temporarily, the grinding poverty of Third World nations because we think of those nations as developing, following in our...

score:9, 04/20/1989, ,

The Richest Ten Percent, the Poorest Forty Percent

The 1989 World Bank Development Report came out last month, an event that created excitement nowhere except in the hearts of statistics freaks like me...

score:9, 07/06/1989, ,

Letters from Africa, Help from America

The sheer brutality of the poverty is the hardest for us to get used to. It takes them so much energy just to live a...

score:9, 12/20/1990, ,

What on Earth to Do About Population?

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...

score:9, 11/07/1991, ,

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, ,

Power to the Planners or to the People?

We had spent two days indoors, talking, talking, talking, and not agreeing. We had to go out into the community of Guarari before we saw...

score:9, 08/05/1993, ,

Brazil Has Yet to Learn the Meaning of Sustinable Development

Since the assassination of Chico Mendes those who govern Brazil have been trying desperately to recover their image as fit leaders for a large, dynamic...

score:9, 07/28/1993, ,

Need the Coming Anarchy Come?

It is unacceptable to be terminally pessimistic in public. The media like to picture a bright future of global trade and information superhighways, and that...

score:9, 02/10/1994, ,

Haiti Need Not Remain the Basket Case of the Western Hemisphere

Poor Haiti. Intractable Haiti. Haiti, oppressed by Papa Doc, Baby Doc, and now a pack of even more rapacious generals. Haiti, the problem that keeps...

score:9, 07/14/1994, ,

Addictive Welfare -- Can People Be Fixed?

Talk radio while driving west on Oklahoma 51 just before the election. On comes the Republican candidate for governor. Some people are just bad and...

score:9, 11/10/1994, ,

The Least of These Our Brethren

It's Christmastime, the one time of the year in this increasingly Scrooge-like land, when one is allowed to advocate generosity to the poor...

score:9, 12/19/1996, ,

Keeping Everyone Warm

On the day before Christmas a local newspaper story told, as many newspaper stories do, of a case of human suffering induced by government stupidity...

score:9, 12/26/1996, ,

We Can Do Something About Population by Doing Something About Poverty

When you hear talk about what to do with all the garbage, what to do about traffic, health care, urban sprawl, hunger -- almost any kind...

score:9, 10/16/1997, ,

Why Do These Irresponsible People Blame Society for Their Problems?

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about population growth and poverty. In response came a letter that took my breath away. It says...

score:9, 11/20/1997, ,

Poverty is Real, and It is Not Ok

Almost thirty years ago I returned from a long stay in India with my mind, body, and senses full of dust and color, peace and...

score:9, 11/04/1999, ,

There's "survivor" and then There's Real Survival

Linda Harrar is an independent filmmaker based in Boston, but she's usually traveling the world producing documentaries for NOVA and other PBS programs. Through...

score:9, 08/31/2000, ,

Nobody Ever Dies of Overpopulation

In April 1991 a great storm roared from the sea into the river delta of Bangladesh and killed a number of people that will never...

score:7, 07/11/1991, ,

Being Homeless is More Than Being Without Shelter

Last Christmas I was homeless, in a way, for awhile. I FELT homeless anyway, and the pain was sharp enough to give me a small...

score:6, 12/22/1988, ,