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
simple world problem
The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system . We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.
models complexes
Models can easily become so complex that they are impenetrable, unexaminable, and virtually unalterable.
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.
zoos needs national-parks
Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone.
luxury growth purpose
Speak the truth. Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently, and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power. Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence. All growth is not good. The environment is a necessity, not a luxury. There is such a thing as enough.
environmental president world
A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate.
figures
We can't control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!
world purpose boundaries
There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.
science agreement climate
Scientists worldwide agree that the reduction needed to stabilize the climate is actually more like 80 percent.
future technology oil
The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right
businesses critically dead feeding food genetic putting stop substances tinkering
We wouldn't have to speak so critically if businesses would stop feeding dead animals to live ones, putting non-food substances into food, tinkering with genetic codes, and spraying the countryside with poisons.
impossible leveling life moving thoughts wasting
We know it is impossible to go on finding, moving and wasting oil, leveling forests, paving land, dumping poisons, and multiplying our numbers. A new way of life, a new set of thoughts must be found.
ask campaigns corrupt expect given highest jokes mean sale seem vice
We have come to expect campaigns to be mean and stupid and politicians to be unresponsive, self-seeking and for sale to the highest bidder. We make jokes about our vice president, and all we ask of a president is that he be likeable. We seem to have given up on the Pentagon's corrupt use of our tax dollars.
ability business cost expenses intimidate laws legal legitimate pockets voice
We don't need new laws that can be used by organizations with deep pockets and the ability to deduct legal expenses as a cost of doing business to intimidate individuals or organizations that voice legitimate concerns.