Donella Meadows

Tweet After Chernobyl, Hans Bethe, pictured at left, said “the Chernobyl disaster tells us about the deficiencies of the Soviet political and administrative system rather than about problems with nuclear power” (PBS).  Dr. Bethe is right.  Managing nuclear power and our energy infrastructure is not limited to physics and engineering. It also involves economics, human [...]

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In his State of the Union Address <video, transcript Englsh, en español>, President Obama said “The best anti-poverty program is a world classeducation watch free the king’s speech online .” He described a positive, or reinforcing, feedback loop. Education enables people to accomplish more, earn more, and better educate their children, who also accomplish more [...]

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Robert F. Kennedy, in a speech at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968,  said: “Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and [...]

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The Frankenstein Monster as interpreted by Boris Karloff may have been a big guy who didn’t know his own strength – again unbalanced reinforcing loops. As interpreted by Mel Brooks he was just misunderstood. Once those reinforcing loops were balanced – put the big lug in a tux – all hell didn’t break loose. Systems [...]

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