Donella Meadows Archives

Building a Green Economy

By Paul Krugman The following article was originally published in the New York Times Magazine on April 7, 2010. If you listen to climate scientists — and despite the relentless campaign to discredit their work, you should — it is long past time to do something about emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If we continue with business as usual, they [...]

Sustainable Agriculture for Midsized Farms

by Hal Hamilton – August 2003 – How can sustainable agriculture gain greater traction, particularly for midrange farmers? Although small farms, particularly those around metropolitan regions, are enjoying resurgence in recent years, the midrange of agriculture is stuck in conventional commodity production. These midrange farms are usually too big to market products directly to consumers and too small to compete in commodity markets. In [...]

Electricity Restructuring and Faith in the Market

By Donella Meadows –January 18, 2001—- As blackouts roll through California, the New Hampshire Supreme Court just cleared the way for electrical restructuring, while a Vermont utility assures legislators that what is happening out west can’t happen here. Why not? As I hear people try to explain California’s electricity problem, I wonder whether anyone really understands the market system. We discuss it endlessly, we [...]

The Death Tax Does Not Deserve To Die

by Donella Meadows – September 21, 2000 – Last month the Republican Congress nearly managed to wipe out the inheritance tax — which Republicans call the “death tax,” as if it were a severance tax on departures, rather than an income tax on inheritors. I have never been able to understand why, if we’re going to tax income at all, we should consider [...]

Rhetoric About Taxes, Facts About Taxes

by Donella Meadows – April 27, 2000 – I’m not sure how or when our political arena became so infested with dubious “facts.”  However it happened, we ordinary citizens don’t have time to separate the truth from the barrage of falsehoods.  So I am grateful for public-interest research groups that watch the numbers for us. One of the best is Citizens for Tax [...]

About DMI

Since its founding in 1996 by environmental leader Donella Meadows, our Institute has been at the forefront of sustainability thinking and training. Our initiatives have addressed economic, environmental, and social challenges from a range of angles and at many levels. In everything we do, the disciplines of systems thinking and organizational learning inform and shape our work. It is this focus on whole-system analysis, combined with careful listening, truth telling, and visioning, that make the Donella Meadows Institute unique among sustainability organizations.  Read More

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