Donella Meadows Quotes

Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany have detailed plans to cut their greenhouse emissions by 20 to 50 percent.

There have been high crimes and misdemeanors, but they have been committed by the special prosecutor and the Congress, not the president.

A grand jury hears only one side - that of the prosecutor

Scientists worldwide agree that the reduction needed to stabilize the climate is actually more like 80 percent.

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate.

Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.

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.

We can't control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!

Glaciers are almost gone from Glacier National Park

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

You should issue demerits for tree cutting or the destruction of humus.

Mesarovic and Pestel are critical of the Forrester-Meadows world view, which is that of a homogeneous system with a fully predetermined evolution in time once the initial conditions are specified.

Models can easily become so complex that they are impenetrable, unexaminable, and virtually unalterable.

Since the Earth is finite, and we will have to stop expanding sometime, should we do it before or after nature's diversity is gone?

A good leader sets the right goals, gets things moving, and helps us to discover that we already know what to do.

There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.

A vision should be judged by the clarity of its values, not the clarity of its implementation path [in Mediated Modeling page 43]

The European nations take climate change very seriously.

George W. cares as much about climate change as you would expect from a Texas oilman

What Clinton did with Lewinsky was despicable but was no threat to the nation. That he lied about it repeatedly and to the public is a reason for us to cease to trust him and for him to resign.

The climate continues to deteriorate.

Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or sequester information

I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest.

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.

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.

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.