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
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.
chemicals endanger massive quantities
If we emit massive quantities of untested chemicals into the environment, some of them are bound to end up in places that surprise us, doing things that endanger us.
express folks others polished puppets rather stumbling
I'm a talk-show junkie. I'd rather listen to real folks stumbling to express their own thoughts than to polished puppets reading what others have written.
consumers people produces products quickly seduced until
Recession-resistant development produces things people need. Unsustainable growth churns out tinsel products that consumers have to be seduced into buying - until times get tough, when they quickly give them up.
crashes dumb efficient looking sources
Smart development invests in insulation, efficient cars, and ever-renewed sources of energy. Dumb growth crashes around looking for more oil.
again stopped
Once again I stopped listening to the news this week.
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.
change enormous environmental face great human land lead require sacrifices
Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course.
against bending call leaning people shy talk town trouble wall
At town meetings, you can see the shy folks, the ones who have trouble sounding off in public, leaning against the back wall or bending over their knitting. On talk radio, those people are invisible, but they're there. It's a mistake to think that the blowhards who call in speak for the nation.
corporate future responsibility workers
Corporate responsibility extends not only to the customers, the resources and the workers of the present, but also to those of the future.
earth exception hardly life people possible spill
There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.
builds distant dumb invites layoffs local profits resources risks
Smart development builds on a region's own skills, resources and local businesses. Dumb growth invites a big corporation in, surrenders control and profits to a distant headquarters, undercuts local manufacturers, and risks layoffs without warning.
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.