Is the Future Our Choice or Fate?

I was one of the team of people at MIT who wrote a book that created a worldwide burst of media foreboding. It began as a small report to the Club of Rome....

score:9, 12/31/1969, ,

An Endangered Species Can Be Fun

I couldn't believe it when I saw the item on the town meeting agenda: "Article 26. To see if the town will vote to...

score:9, 07/10/1986, ,

Portugal's Generation of Hope

How is it that every now and then a society lets a whole generation get the idea that it can really solve problems? Portugal, though...

score:9, 07/24/1986, ,

A Time of Death, a Time of Life

The shepherd's new year begins in November. That's when we bring the sheep up from the pasture, butcher last spring's lambs and...

score:9, 11/27/1986, ,

Two Stories and a Whole Bunch of Morals

Here are two simple stories for the holiday season and a question. The question is, what is the moral? What point do these stories make...

score:9, 12/25/1986, ,

Good Environmental News from All over

If you pay attention to the environmental news, you can easily get the impression that the waters and air and soils of the earth are...

score:9, 01/15/1987, ,

Home, Home on the Loam

It's Earth Day 1987 at the University of Wisconsin, where Earth Day is alive and well. A retired professor of Soil Science, with the...

score:9, 04/30/1987, ,

Problems Are Interconnected -- and So Are Solutions

One of the favorite maxims of environmentalists is that Everything is Connected to Everything Else. That idea is usually delivered with a heavy charge of...

score:9, 02/18/1988, ,

What Would the World Be Like if There Were No Hunger?

About one out of every eight persons on earth is chronically hungry. The daily death toll from hunger is around 35,000 people, equivalent to...

score:9, 12/17/1987, ,

Ethnic Jokes People Tell About Themselves

There are jokes some folks tell to demean other folks, such as Polish jokes told by Americans. They tell you more about the mean-spiritness...

score:9, 09/03/1987, ,

Freedom Stories, Freedom Songs

Hundreds of women paraded down the streets of Johannesberg, South Africa, a few weeks ago, singing freedom songs to protest their government's suppression of...

score:9, 03/24/1988, ,

A Lament from the Countryside

As I write, the sun, low in the west, is just shining out from beneath storm clouds. This is the third bank of clouds to...

score:9, 07/07/1988, ,

A Letter, Anguish, and a Rubber Band

I suppose everyone who writes a regular newspaper column gets an amazing stream of letters from readers -- I do, anyway. They scold me and praise...

score:9, 07/13/1989, ,

A Call for Environmental Success Stories

For the past three years a Washington-based group called Renew America has published an annual report card on the environmental progress (or regress) of...

score:9, 07/27/1989, ,

Ashoka Fellows: Entrepreneurs for a Better World

Every now and then the air in Mexico City gets so bad that flocks of migrating birds flying overhead rain down dead on the city...

score:9, 12/14/1989, ,

Let's Have Some Hugs for John Sununu

Much as I favor recycling and writing to Congress, deep down I know that's not enough to end our environmental problems. Even if we...

score:9, 08/22/1991, ,

Time for a Celebration

If at any time over the past 50 years a message from God had arrived, written across the sky so that no one could deny...

score:9, 07/02/1992, ,

Time for a Celebration

If at any time over the past 50 years a message from God had arrived, written across the sky so that no one could deny...

score:9, 07/02/1992, ,

How One Bit of Your Foreign Aid Money Was Spent

Most Americans, according to opinion polls, believe that huge quantities of their tax dollars go to foreign aid, and that this money is largely wasted...

score:9, 08/25/1993, ,

Turtles, Eagles, Whales, Love, and Power

"Why I Am An Environmentalist," was the title of a paper handed in by one of my students -- the kind of title that makes my...

score:9, 03/10/1994, ,

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and Trust Your Common Sense

Out there in readerland some folks live at an amazingly high level of environmental consciousness. For example, here's part of a letter I got...

score:9, 03/03/1994, ,

What Keeps You Going?

"Last month I got upset enough to ski 2.5 miles out of this remote cabin to send a letter to my Congressional delegates," writes...

score:9, 01/26/1995, ,

An Assignment from the Anti-Barbaric Coalition

In spite of the horrors that assault us in the news each day, there are people all over the world who still have faith in...

score:9, 08/17/1995, ,

An Early Morning Conversation with Gandhi

This morning before daylight my radio clicked on and I heard, through a sleepy haze, that Congress has passed and the president has signed a...

score:9, 11/30/1995, ,

What Happens when You Believe the Prophets of Doom?

Of all the tragic characters in Greek myths, the one who gives me the most shivers is Cassandra. The god Apollo gave her a wonderful...

score:9, 10/14/1999, ,