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
dependent integrated life planet shaped sustains system third
We are dependent not so much on Earth, the third planet orbiting the sun, as on Gaea, the integrated system that includes, sustains and is shaped by life.
engaging fellow human mean objects refused support
The kind of support the down-and-out need is the kind we have always refused them, the kind that would mean engaging with them not as objects of contempt, but as fellow human beings.
borrowing degrading future human massively meeting money needs resources ultimately
The human world is a long way from meeting the needs of the present, and it is borrowing massively from the future - not only by piling up money debt, but also by degrading the resources from which all real wealth ultimately comes.
bill cause cosby draw funny helps mind neutral pompous popularity state terrible
Some call-in moderators are neutral and courteous. Then there's Rush Limbaugh, who is funny and pompous and a scapegoater and hatemonger. His popularity could cause you to draw some terrible conclusions about the state of mind of the American people. It helps to remember that Bill Cosby is popular, too.
bigger few flows good humankind material planetary powers relative sensitive
Relative to most of the energy and material flows on Earth, the machinations of humankind are puny. The planet's powers are much, much bigger than our own. But in a few sensitive places, we're making an impact on a planetary scale, and that impact is not a good one.
cheap constant ends human means physical sold substitute unless wants
No one wants growth, constant expansion, physical swelling. Growth is not a human value; it's a means to the ends of sufficiency and security. Once we have enough, no one wants more, unless it is sold to us as a cheap substitute for something else, something non-material.
Growth is a stupid goal. So, by the way, is no-growth.
carry complex huge island large mile scale total witnessed
We have witnessed Chernobyl, Bhopal, Challenger, Seveso, Amoco Cadiz, Three Mile Island and have still not wakened from our fantasy that large organizations can carry out complex technologies on a huge scale with total perfection.
count destroying diversity extinction fair greatly guess population pushing rate reduced species whose within
It's a fair guess that at the rate we're destroying habitat, especially but not exclusively in the tropics, we're pushing to extinction about one species every hour. That doesn't count the species whose populations are being reduced so greatly that diversity within the population is essentially gone.
ability art basic college education great hear lack mean possessed radio seek small talk truths
What I hear every day on talk radio is America's lack of education - and I don't mean lack of college degrees. I mean lack of the basic art of democracy, the ability to seek the great truths that can come only by synthesizing the small truths possessed by each of us.
accept both calls cruel cutting ending freedom human ideology listening nonsense poverty refusal requires wisdom
Ending poverty calls for humility, honesty, freedom from ideology and refusal to accept cruel simplicities about anyone's human potential. It requires listening to the wisdom and cutting the nonsense from both the Right and the Left.
analysis background case forces foreground policy politics shaped
Every policy is shaped by two forces: background analysis and foreground politics. The political forces are loud, self-serving and, in the case of energy policy, well known.
both burnt caught cut developing drawn economy faster forests fossil fuels ground physical reached states united
Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
although among available birth brought care education family fertility health key lower mostly partly per poorest rate seem social wealth
Social services, not wealth per se, seem to be the key to lower birth rates. The Chinese, although among the poorest peoples of the world, have brought their fertility rate down to 2.4, partly by social coercion, but mostly by broadly available education, health care and family planning.