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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm. – Donella Meadows
World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size. – Donella Meadows
There have been high crimes and misdemeanors, but they have been committed by the special prosecutor and the Congress, not the president. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
We don’t need bigger cars or fancier clothes. We need self-respect, identity, community, love, variety, beauty, challenge and a purpose in living that is greater than material accumulation. – Donella Meadows
Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
I know that war and mayhem run in our blood. I refuse to believe that they must dominate our lives. We humans are animals, too, but animals with amazing powers of rationality, morality, society. We can use our strength and courage not to savage each other, but to defend our highest purposes. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
The grand jury’s job is not to weigh the evidence from both sides; it is only to decide whether there is enough evidence on one side to bring a person to trial. – Donella Meadows
Smart development invests in insulation, efficient cars, and ever-renewed sources of energy. Dumb growth crashes around looking for more oil. – Donella Meadows
A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world’s nations toward saving the climate. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany have detailed plans to cut their greenhouse emissions by 20 to 50 percent. – Donella Meadows
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. – Donella Meadows
Corporate responsibility extends not only to the customers, the resources and the workers of the present, but also to those of the future. – Donella Meadows
