The Donella Meadows Archive

A Glimpse of Freedom for the World's Hostages

With 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world, everyone is a hostage. We are innocent targets, held in constant jeopardy to prevent one group of...

score:9, 11/06/1986, ,

Nuclear Weapons After Reykjavik -- Join the Debate

Since Reykjavik the superpowers have gone right on insulting each other. They have expelled each other's diplomats. The Soviets have revoked their nuclear testing...

score:9, 12/11/1986, ,

What Shall We Do About America?

Peace groups all over the country have been asking "What shall we do about 'Amerika'?" "Amerika" is the TV miniseries, to be broadcast later this...

score:9, 02/12/1987, ,

We Don't Need to Squander Oil and Lives

Why were 37 young men killed on the USS Stark as it patrolled the Persian Gulf? Because an Iraqi fighter plane fired an Exocet missile...

score:9, 05/28/1987, ,

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 Nobel Peace Prize for Costa Rica

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has a way of using the prize itself to strengthen ongoing peace efforts. That is one reason why it awarded...

score:9, 11/05/1987, ,

After the Treaty What Happens to the Bombs?

In their debate in Hanover last week the Republican candidates raised a question that's been bothering me for weeks. What will happen to the...

score:9, 01/14/1988, ,

The Academics Meet the Army to Plan Century 21

When I was invited to a weekend workshop to help the U.S. Army think through its 30-year plan, I almost didn't go...

score:9, 03/10/1988, ,

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Given what's at stake, the world's people can be grateful for a summit at which superpower leaders practice politeness with one another, even...

score:9, 06/09/1988, ,

The Earth and the Nation Do Not Need More Plutonium

The element called plutonium did not exist on earth until 1941, when Glenn T. Seaborg made the first measurable amounts of it by bombarding uranium...

score:9, 06/16/1988, ,

Out of Sight, out of Mind -- in Sight, out of Mind

The worst trick of the human mind is its habit of discounting whatever it has not directly experienced. Most of us don't live in...

score:9, 11/03/1988, ,

A Rohrschach Test in the Middle East

Iraq's aggression in the Middle East has provided a big, oily Rohrschach spot, in which we can all read the messages already ingrained in...

score:9, 08/09/1990, ,

Nuclear Weapons Have Never Been So Dangerous

Two months ago another piece of the Soviet Union became an ecological disaster zone. A nuclear fuel plant exploded, releasing a cloud of toxic beryllium...

score:9, 11/15/1990, ,

Wage a Quiet War Against War

"Why aren't you writing columns to oppose this war?" my peace-activist friends are asking me. Because this is a time of rampant misinformation...

score:9, 01/03/1991, ,

Names, Faces, and Families

A weeping Iraqi man approached a BBC reporter outside the bombed bunker in Baghdad and handed him six identity cards. "My wife and children were...

score:9, 02/28/1991, ,

Making up a War

So this is how it happens. This is how the world convinces itself that war is inevitable, logical, and necessary. It's an age-old...

score:9, 01/17/1991, ,

The Costs of War to Those at Home

The people who tried hardest to warn us against this war were those who had experienced war. Among them were veterans who stood up in...

score:9, 01/24/1991, ,

The Lessons of the War

The war in the Gulf is over but the story-telling is just beginning, and the story-telling is, in the long run, the most...

score:9, 03/07/1991, ,

One More Chapter in the History of Oil and War

Daniel Yergin's new book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power is perfect background reading for this perilous time in the...

score:9, 01/10/1991, ,

Kuwait's Oil -- the Future up in Flames

"Kind of sick," was President Bush's response to the news that the Iraqis had opened an oil terminal and let it spill into the...

score:9, 05/09/1991, ,

Things Fall Apart; the Center Cannot Hold

Every now and then I hear something in the news that reminds me of the chilling poem "The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats. Usually...

score:9, 11/28/1991, ,

How to Stop a Bloody Run of History?

Almost thirty years ago I spent my honeymoon in Bosnia-Herzegovina. My husband and I and a group of Europeans kayaked the Drina river, which...

score:9, 08/13/1992, ,

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, ,

With Indian and Pakistani Bombs, is Anyone Feeling More Secure?

During this dreadful time when people are dancing in the streets because their nations have nuclear bombs and politicians actually seem to believe they can...

score:9, 06/04/1998, ,

Why Kosovo is a Battleground Again

Surprised citizens are flooding Congress with calls asking how this Kosovo mess came about and why we're involved in it. When I heard that...

score:9, 04/01/1999, ,