The Donella Meadows Archive

Six Fallacies of Modern Agriculture

Farm subsidies are over $20 billion a year, farmers go broke anyway, pesticides contaminate water and food, and topsoil washes down the river. Why is...

score:9, 07/02/1987, ,

E.B. White the Skeptic and Ollie North the True Believer

Last week while I was watching Oliver North testify before Congress, I was also reading a biography of the great American writer E.B. White...

score:9, 07/16/1987, ,

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, ,

Who Should Prove What to Whom About Acid Rain?

Every weekday morning this summer, six college students set out from the Ravine Lodge on Mt. Moosilauke in New Hampshire to spend the day measuring...

score:9, 08/25/1988, ,

The Greenhouse Effect, Left, Right, and Center

"High Cost of Greenhouse Hysteria" reads one recent headline. Another says "Greenhouse Effect Looks Like Just a Lot of Hot Air." And a third: "Environmentalists...

score:9, 09/28/1989, ,

The Environment, the Capital Gains Tax and the Burden of Proof

Whenever a large profit-making enterprise in this great nation is told that its activities might not be good for the environment, it calls for...

score:9, 09/21/1989, ,

Greenhouse Extremists -- on Both Sides

We don't want to side with extremists on either side, says George Bush in defense of his wimpy stand on the greenhouse effect. He...

score:9, 02/22/1990, ,

The Lessons of the Exxon Valdez

A year after the oil spill of the Exxon Valdez, the nation is busy Drawing Lessons. What can we conclude from this worst-ever-yet...

score:9, 04/05/1990, ,

Many Creation Stories, None of Them Plausible

"We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story," says cultural historian Thomas Berry. "The old story, the account of...

score:9, 11/07/1990, ,

A Scientific Consensus on Global Warming

Is there a greenhouse effect or isn't there? In the United States that question has become political. Some people think global warming is an...

score:9, 10/11/1990, ,

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, ,

Traumas to the Planet That Have and Haven't Happened

Last January scientists warned that the Northern Hemisphere was about to be visited by a massive ozone hole. The hole never appeared. The community of...

score:9, 06/25/1992, ,

Enclosure in an Eco-Boomerang Produces a New Way of Seeing

The first media reports were glowing. There was Biosphere 2, a huge greenhouse in the Arizona desert, containing a miniature ocean, a rainforest, a savanna...

score:9, 09/24/1992, ,

You See the Greenhouse Effect when You Believe It

Well, according to Rush Limbaugh and the Mobil Oil Corporation, we can stop worrying about global warming. Says Mobil in an ad titled "Apocalypse no"...

score:9, 03/04/1993, ,

Walking Awhile in Each Others' Moccasins

Last year Barbara Sable, head of the Human Services Agency in New York, sought welfare payments from her own agency, to see what the process...

score:9, 07/22/1993, ,

Gardening Brings out the Truth

Something about gardening gets me thinking about politics. Maybe it's the bending over with the blood running to my head. Maybe making a tiny...

score:9, 06/13/1996, ,

Citizens Who Love Their Ponds Can Help to Save Them

The good news is that our Clean Water Act, plus billions of dollars in municipal treatment plants and industrial wastewater processing, has rescued many of...

score:9, 07/11/1996, ,

Environmental Debates Have Science and Emotion on All Sides

OK, that's it. I've heard that "science versus emotion" taunt just once too often. Nuclear power proponents toss it out like a grenade...

score:9, 05/01/1997, ,

Expert Statements Worth Paying Attention to

Lay the world's economists end to end, goes an old joke, and they'll still point in every direction. Ask the world's scientists...

score:9, 07/10/1997, ,

Chemical Company Arguments That Don't Quite Connect

Public relations people have a funny way of arguing. You say something, and they answer with a change of subject. It's like a tennis...

score:9, 09/10/1998, ,

The Environmental Legend and the Real Tongass

There's such a difference between knowing something in your head and experiencing it directly with your whole self. I've known about the Tongass...

score:9, 08/27/1998, ,

Weeping for the Shrimp and the Zambians and the Macaques

By nature I'm an optimist; to me all glasses are half-full. Though I spend my days with news about the global environment -- news...

score:9, 01/07/1999, ,

Sand County Almanac Fifty Years Later

In 1949 a small book was published shortly after its author, Aldo Leopold, died of a heart attack while fighting a forest fire near his...

score:9, 01/21/1999, ,

Saying It Straight

Awhile ago I wrote a column full of solemn statements written by august scientists and other wise persons, all warning that we are trashing our...

score:9, 12/16/1999, ,

Earth Day Plus Thirty, As Seen by the Earth

If, in the 30 Earth Day celebrations held since 1970, the human population and economy have become any more respectful of the Earth, the Earth...

score:9, 04/20/2000, ,