Articles by Donella Meadows
Donella H. Meadows (1941-2001) was an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College and director of the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vt.
All Articles
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This is not what democracy looks like
I wish everyone would stop calling them “debates.” Even back when the League of Women Voters first televised confrontations between presidential candidates, they weren’t debates. At best they were stiff, unnatural political discussions. Now that the two major political parties run them, they are carefully controlled soundbite gotcha matches. Like most everything about our campaign […]
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Consumers have the power to fight factory farms
According to the rules of the World Trade Organization, governments cannot block the import of a product on the basis of how it is produced. So what if a rainforest has been cut down or a stream polluted or an animal tortured or workers paid pitiful wages? That’s the concern of the producing country, not […]
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How can we make environmental laws work better?
Now that I’ve suffered under one firsthand, I can understand why people hate environmental laws. On a map of our farm filed away at the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources is a fateful dot. It stands for an endangered Siberian Chive, observed by someone decades ago. This dot popped up when we applied under Vermont’s […]
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Why do we compete even though we know it hurts us?
Not beary funny. Photo: Art Wolfe, Inc. I’ve heard the joke about the bear before, and so, probably, have you. Two guys are sitting outside their tent in a forest campsite when they see a huge angry bear charging toward them. One starts lacing up his running shoes. The other says, “Are you crazy? You’ll […]
