Donella Meadows
Donella Meadows
Donella H. "Dana" Meadowswas a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer. She is best known as lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth and Thinking in Systems: a Primer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEnvironmentalist
Date of Birth14 March 1941
CountryUnited States of America
stupid government world
Why is our (US) government the only one in the civilized world with a stupid, short-term energy policy? Why do our elected officials consider a European or Japanese-type energy tax not only unpassable but undiscussable?
government people support
The actions of my government are not bearable. They devastate our natural resources and deprive our people. The politicians speak piously while practicing greed and divisiveness; they care nothing for the nation. I want to do more than withdraw my support. I want to tar and feather them.
ability creates dependency government layers points sort swamps useful wasteful wrong
Before they got vengeful, conservatives had some useful points to make about welfare. Government 'help' is too often guilt-assuaging gesture. It creates layers of wasteful bureaucracy. Too much help of the wrong sort creates a culture of dependency that swamps our ability to provide.
drifting government higher insist low nation resolve stop tension wake
No expectations, no tension between goals and performance, no outrage, resolve or intention, no action, no results. There's only one way to get a government - and a nation - to stop drifting to low performance. That's to wake up and insist on higher standards.
appeals case decided grand north permit release thoroughly
In 1994 the U.S. Court of Appeals decided in the case of Oliver North to permit the release of grand jury evidence, because it had already been so thoroughly leaked.
behave powerful
If they can do these things to the most powerful person in the nation, they can do them to you or me. Dictatorships behave this way, not democracies.
self long innovation
Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet.
dream real believe
It is not OK in this culture to talk to friends about causes you believe in, much less to ask them to join in. It's OK to blast perfect strangers with crass messages every hour of the day, but it's a tinge embarrassing, it brings up some shyness, it seems an intrusion, it risks rejection to share real heartfelt commitments. It's easier to share our cynicism with strangers than our dreams with friends.
mistake thinking ecosystems
We don't think a sustainable society need be stagnant, boring, uniform, or rigid. It need not be, and probably could not be, centrally controlled or authoritarian. It could be a world that has the time, the resources, and the will to correct its mistakes, to innovate, to preserve the fertility of its planetary ecosystems. It could focus on mindfully increasing quality of life rather than on mindlessly expanding material consumption and the physical capital stock.
aggravation climate
The climate continues to deteriorate.
hype president special
There have been high crimes and misdemeanors, but they have been committed by the special prosecutor and the Congress, not the president.
cells people patterns
A system is a set of things people, cells, molecules, or whatever interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time... The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior.
views world evolution
Mesarovic and Pestel are critical of the Forrester-Meadows world view, which is that of a homogeneous system with a fully predetermined evolution in time once the initial conditions are specified.
despair too-much complacency
There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.