There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.
Donella H. MeadowsA vision should be judged by the clarity of its values, not the clarity of its implementation path
[in Mediated Modeling page 43]
Tags: life
We can't impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.
Donella H. MeadowsRemember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.
Donella H. MeadowsTags: knowledge understanding beliefs
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 H. MeadowsTags: society sustainability economic-growth
We see no reason why a sustainable world needs to leave anyone living in poverty. Quite the contrary, we think such a world would have to provide material security to all its people.
Donella H. MeadowsSustainability is a new idea to many people, and many find it hard to understand. But all over the world there are people who have entered into the exercise of imagining and bringing into being a sustainable world. They see it as a world to move toward not reluctantly, but joyfully, not with a sense of sacrifice, but a sense of adventure. A sustainable world could be very much better than the one we live in today.
Donella H. MeadowsTags: economics growth sustainability
But rules for sustainability, like every workable social rule, would be put into place not to destroy freedoms, but to create freedoms or to protect them. A ban on bank robbing inhibits the freedom of the thief in order to assure that everyone else has the freedom to deposit and withdraw money safely. A ban on overuse of a renewable resource or on the generation of a dangerous pollutant protects vital freedoms in a similar way.
Donella H. MeadowsOne of the strangest assumptions of present-day mental models is the idea that world of moderation must be a world of strict, centralized government control. For a sustainable economy, that kind of control is not possible, desirable, or necessary.
Donella H. MeadowsThe difference between a sustainable society and a present-day economic recession is like the difference between stopping and automobile purposefully with the brakes versus stopping it by crashing into a brick wall. When the present economy overshoots, it turns around too quickly and unexpectedly for people and enterprises to retrain, relocate, and readjust. A deliberate transition to sustainability would take place slowly enough, and with enough forewarning, to that people and businesses could find their places in the new economy.
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