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
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.
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.
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.
space impact addiction
It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.
diversity earth gone
Since the Earth is finite, and we will have to stop expanding sometime, should we do it before or after nature's diversity is gone?
people vision credit
The sustainability revolution will be organic. It will arise from the visions, insights, experiments and actions of billions of people. The burden of making it happen is not on the shoulders of any one person or group. No one will get the credit, but everyone can contribute.
moving goal leader
A good leader sets the right goals, gets things moving, and helps us to discover that we already know what to do.