The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological - social - psychological - economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.

Donella Meadows

Categorized in : World Simple Problem

The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right

Donella Meadows

future technology nature

No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.

Donella Meadows

democracy speak justice

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

Donella Meadows

climate agreement science

The first commandment of economics is: Grow. Grow forever. Companies get bigger. National economies need to swell by a certain percent each year. People should want more, make more, earn more, spend more - ever more.

Donella Meadows

sunshine people years

We don't think a sustainable society need be stagnant, boring, uniform, or rigid. It need not be, and probably could not be, centrally controlled or authoritarian. It could be a world that has the time, the resources, and the will to correct its mistakes, to innovate, to preserve the fertility of its planetary ecosystems. It could focus on mindfully increasing quality of life rather than on mindlessly expanding material consumption and the physical capital stock.

Donella Meadows

ecosystems mistake thinking

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

national-parks zoos needs

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

Donella Meadows

vision pages path

Speak the truth.

Donella Meadows

luxury growth purpose

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

support government people

The sustainability revolution will be organic. It will arise from the visions, insights, experiments and actions of billions of people. The burden of making it happen is not on the shoulders of any one person or group. No one will get the credit, but everyone can contribute.

Donella Meadows

groups vision people

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

Donella Meadows

despair news too-much

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

Donella Meadows

leader goal moving

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.

Donella Meadows

purpose boundaries world

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

Donella Meadows

environmental atmosphere stupid

I call the transformed world toward which we can move ‘sustainable,’ by which I mean a great deal more than a world that merely sustains itself unchanged. I mean a world that evolves, as life on earth has evolved for three billion years, toward ever greater diversity, elegance, beauty, self-awareness, interrelationship, and spiritual realization.

Donella Meadows

spiritual mean moving

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

Donella Meadows

complexes models

It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.

Donella Meadows

impact space people

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

Donella Meadows

figures

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

Donella Meadows

environmental climate president

A system is a set of things people, cells, molecules, or whatever interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time... The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior.

Donella Meadows

molecules cells people