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DONELLA MEADOWS EARTH DAY MEMORIAL SERVICE
Sunday,
April 22, 2001, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Welcome/Introductory Comments
Personal Tributes
Wim Hafkamp, Member, The Balaton Group
Robert Braile, Journalist, The Boston Globe
Linda Harrar, Independent Film Producer
Les Kaufman, Professor, Boston University Marine Program, and Pew Scholar
Ashley Lanfer, Dartmouth College Alumna
Bill McKibben, Author
Tribute to the Life of Dana Meadows
Anthony D. Cortese, Second Nature
Today we come together to celebrate the life and work of one of the greatest people I have ever met–Donella (Dana) Meadows.
The thought of the world without one of the brightest, most thoughtful, insightful, caring souls who truly lived the values she espoused is almost unbearable. Dana was a great visionary in a culture that is often lacking in vision. She was the first of the great systems thinkers that have helped us all see the world in a holistic and interdependent way, a great teacher, an outstanding mentor to thousands of people (including me) and a gifted communicator. In her own words, she was also "an opinionated columnist, opera lover, baker, farmer and global gadfly".
She was best known to the world as the lead author of the international best selling book The Limits to Growth, published in 1972. The book, which reported on a study of long-term global trends in population, economics, and the environment, sold 9 million of copies and was translated into 28 languages. She was also the lead author of the twenty-year follow-up study, Beyond the Limits (1992), with original co-authors Dennis Meadows and Jørgen Randers. This groundbreaking work is one of the most important, misunderstood and misquoted books on the future of society and our environment since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Limits to Growth and Beyond the Limits reached three main conclusions: one of danger, one of hope, and one of urgency. The press and many others in the scientific, policy and industrial communities picked up on only the first and third of the conclusions and tried to debunk it its conclusions, much like the reaction to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962. Ironically, the recent IPCC reports on global climate change completely support the two books' conclusions!
Dana used her brilliance, talents and many other wonderful attributes to benefit all people and the rest of the natural world. Dana was always one step ahead of everyone in anticipating or seeing the next challenge humans and the rest of the natural world would face and offering creative strategies to deal with them. In 1981, together with her former husband Dennis Meadows, she founded the International Network of Resource Information Centers (INRIC), also called the Balaton Group (after the lake in Hungary where the group meets annually). The group built early and critical avenues of exchange between scientists on both sides of the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War.
She spoke truth to power–she never shied away from calling governments, industries, environmentalists, journalists and others to task for policies, behaviors or actions that were unjust, harmful, ineffective or just plain dumb. She never let people who read her weekly syndicated newspaper column, "The Global Citizen", people she interacted with in other ways or her students get away with denial of things that have been wrong in the world. And Dana did it in a way that made you stop, think and be willing to look yourself in the face and see the truth or to take action to right a wrong. I anxiously awaited her column every Thursday–it was just what I needed to keep up the passion and insight to work for a better world. She was highly principled, refused to compromise on issues in which she strongly believed and practiced what she preached–she lived the life and embodied the idealism we hope to emulate.
Dana was always hopeful and inspiring and a strong believer in the ability of humans to change and reach a higher, more just and ethical way of being. She saw "change not as a sacrifice but as a way of learning, staying alive and moving to new places." But Dana's most endearing and admirable quality was to give of herself and her ideas with great humility and joy to everyone who would accept her incredible gifts. She was too young, too vibrant and too important to the world to die this young. We are grateful for all the years that she was alive, her insight and for everything that she shared with the world.
In the final edition of the The Global Citizen (a story she wrote about writing The Limits to Growth in 1972), she wrote:
"I've grown impatient with the kind of debate we used to have about whether optimists or the pessimists are right. Neither is right. There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.
I am not afraid of the challenge of easing the throughput of human society back down within its limits--I think that can be done fairly easily and even with considerable benefit to the human quality of life." Her own headlines for Limits to Growth would be:
"MATERIAL AND ENERGY THROUGHPUT MUST BE CUT, BUT NOT PEOPLE, NOT LIVING STANDARDS, NOT THE DREAM OF A BETTER WORLD"
I had the privilege of knowing Dana and learning from her–a true gift. I know that she is looking down on us today, a little embarrassed by the attention on her but happy to see how well her life and her message were received and will live on for a long time, especially through the many young students she taught. May we always remember the things she has taught us and the example that she set for us all to emulate.
Thank you, Dana, for your insight, your gifts, your love and for touching us so deeply! You will always be in our hearts and in our consciences giving us the courage to carry on the work to create a healthy, just, and environmentally sustainable world!
A Tribute to Dana Meadows, from the Balaton Group
Wim Hafkamp
She talked sustainable development, and walked it.
Dana stood up. She walked around, over towards the overhead projector in the small meeting room, arranged her presentation material on the table, and made one step back into the room. She planted her feet firmly on the ground, straightened her back, and looked up. Actually, it seemed like she was looking at a point above us, on the opposite wall. She was concentrating, focusing, finding her opening sentence. And then she started to speak, looking at us, addressing us, each and every one of us in person. She spoke to us with a directness that I had never experienced before. No filters, no static, no difficult grammar and vocabulary. And it just didn't matter at all that many of us were not native English speakers. Dana spoke with mind and heart, body and soul. That is my first recollection of Dana in a Balaton Group Meeting.
"There is enough, there is plenty! Water, Food, Energy…if only we were able to use it more wisely, and more equitably". That is how she said it at my first Balaton Group Meeting. Until then I had not been aware that Meadows were two. I had read ‘Limits to Growth' some 10 years before, in the mid seventies. And here I was, 1984, in Hotel Petrol (some irony, yet to be written up), in Csopak, Hungary. I had been to many conferences, workshops and meetings, whether academic, policy, activist or other. Also, I had heard good speakers, and seen effective presentations. Yet Dana was different. Sure, the content of her presentation was good. It was on carrying capacity, sustainable yield, and sustainable development. The mind was excellent. With it came her heart. There were a joy and warmth in her voice that I had never heard at conferences and workshops. It wasn't just heart and mind. Especially now, almost 17 years later, I have this striking recollection of the first time I met Dana. She brought more: body and soul. Her composure, the way she moved, when addressing us, when engaging us in a dialogue, they were inspirational. In a literal meaning of the word, Dana inspired us. Not just at meetings of the Balaton Group, outside meetings as well, and not just in 1984.
The Balaton Group emerged out of a meeting organized by Dana and Dennis Meadows in 1982. It took place in Hungary, on the shores of Lake Balaton. The meeting was sponsored by a Hungarian senior government official, Dr. Kapolyi. He had "expressed …interest in supporting .. East-West scientific cooperation related to modeling of energy, resources, and development" (Dennis Meadows in The Creation of the Balaton Group, BG Bulletin of April 2001). The first meeting set the tone: systems thinking on questions of natural resources and environment, sustainable yield and carrying capacity, equity, social and economic development, at various scale levels from local to global, and last but not least communication to other scientists and decision makers. Later meetings often had a specific theme: organic agriculture, energy systems, water management, biodiversity, cultural diversity, reinventing economics, global scenario's for climate change, overconsumption.
Attendance at the first meeting was a global representation of East-West, North-South. The succession of later meetings shaped a global network, offering access, support, inspiration, platform for initiatives, and personal growth. It did so in particular for a younger generation. The ink on my own Ph.D. diploma wasn't dry when I joined in 1984. Anupam Saraph, engineer, came from Poona in India, went on to do his Ph.D. with Wouter Biesiot, started a not-for-profit called Parivartan (Sanskrit for Change), and continues to work on achieving sustainable development under dire conditions. Jorje Zallas, ornithologist from Ecuador, and a specialist on birds of prey, joined the group only a few years ago. Eagle's eye on sustainability, the Balaton group will help strengthen his wings. Chirapol Sintunawa from Thailand, worked on his Ph.D. with Malcolm Slesser in Scotland, now is a prominent scientist and advocate for ecological and social issues. He builds a ‘Sustainable and Peaceful Energy Network' across Asia, with Jorgen Norgaard from Denmark as a Sahabat (good friend). Throughout the last 20 years, Dana was just as energetic between meetings as during meetings, in supporting members of the group, especially young members in their development: personal, professional, academic, in all respects. Alan AtKisson came from Seattle, worked very intensely with Dana, and now heads a not-for-profit consulting unit with a mission: ‘Accelerating Change'.
There are many special qualities to Dana. Her presence in dialogue, with all of her heart and mind, and all of her body and soul were phenomenal. And that is how she would interact with us during entire Balaton Group Meetings (and between). Often on a one-to-one basis, or in smaller groups. Dana would have at least a dozen conversations over breakfast, at various tables, in the hallway, or out on the lawn. Essences, bear hugs, observations, jokes, references, debates, some in miniatures, some in episodes, others in songs. Networking would be an inappropriate term here, because it implies that Dana would be working on her agenda. While in fact she was trying to understand our agendas, and help us most often. Will we be eager and willing to help each other in the same way that Dana helped us? If so, Dana will still be up, and around.
Robert Braile, Journalist, The Boston Globe
A Smile to Her Face, A Twinkle to Her Eyes
Several years ago–this would have been 1996 or 1997–I was sitting in Dana's office up at Dartmouth. I remember that it was a bitterly cold, winter afternoon, quite unlike today. A snowstorm was bearing down on Hanover, and was expected to arrive at any moment. I had stopped by Dana's office, as I often did during my time at Dartmouth, to see how she was, to hear what she had on her mind, but mostly, to be in her presence. As you may not know, Dana was the person who brought me to Dartmouth, and so the person to whom I will forever be indebted, as she made it possible for me to have the most meaningful, most rewarding experience of my professional career, including everything I may have accomplished in my 25 years as an environmental journalist–the honor and privilege of teaching the finest students any teacher could possibly ask for. Students like Ashley Graves Lanfer, who you'll meet in a moment, when she speaks. Dana had become a mentor, an advocate, an ally, a friend, the person most excited about my coming to Dartmouth in 1994, the person most disappointed about my leaving in 1998.
On this one afternoon, Dana wanted to talk about Cobb Hill, the eco-village she was at that time developing in Hartland Four Corners, Vermont. This was to be a place, Dana said, where people could live sustainability, could live environmentalism, could live their ethic, an enclave of hope, of humility, and of certainty, the certainty that comes with a conviction to what one believes.
I remember telling Dana how impressed I was, with the entire venture, the entire idea.
Then, after a pause, Dana said, "You should live there, Bob." And she said it just like that. "You should live there, Bob," a simple imperative.
As you might imagine, I was somewhat taken aback. "Well, Dana, you know I live clear across the state in Durham, New Hampshire, where I own a home…"
"Sell it," she said.
There was another pause. "Well, Dana, you know I have a wife, with a job down there, I have two kids…"
"Bring them," she said.
Now you have to understand–I knew Dana was serious, because every time Dana was serious, every time Dana wanted to make a serious point, and Dana always wanted to make a serious point, she'd get this slight, Mona Lisa smile on her face, and a lightning quick twinkle in her eyes, the combined effect of which was utterly engaging, utterly disarming, utterly arresting, an effect that actually enhanced the gravity of her otherwise serious point, through sheer contrast. At that moment, I saw that smile and that twinkle, and so I knew she was serious.
I told her I'd consider it, sounding ever so much like the diplomat I so long not to be.
In recent weeks, I've been thinking about certainty–what it is, where it comes from, how we attain it, why it matters. And I've been thinking about certainty because I–like you–have been thinking about Dana. For among the many gifts Dana was blessed to have and to bestow, the one that resonates most forcefully in my life, after the gift of enabling me to teach at Dartmouth, was the gift of her certainty. For Dana understood what so few of us understand, or perhaps we do understand but are for some reason reluctant to embrace and to live, in the same way I was reluctant on that afternoon in Dana's office to embrace and to live the opportunity to move to Cobb Hill.
What Dana understood is that we are most alive, when we are most certain.
Thoreau, a century and a half ago, instructed us to live deliberately. But how many of us actually do that? I remember another afternoon, this one more recent, the afternoon of February 21st of this year, when I was at my desk, writing the obituary on Dana for the next day's edition of the Globe. I picked up the phone and called Noel Perrin, the essayist, and another former colleague of mine and Dana's in the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth, to get his thoughts on Dana, to ask him what comes to mind first when he thinks of Dana. Without any more solicitation than that, he cited the same gift–certainty. "Dana," he said, "was more consistent than Thoreau. It's characteristic for many environmental thinkers to not carry over their environmentalism into their private lives," he said. "But not her."
We are most alive, when we are most certain.
I don't know if I'll ever live at Cobb Hill, in Hartland Four Corners, Vermont. But in a sense, I already do. In a sense, we all do, those of who are here today, celebrating Dana's life, those of us who at this very moment are doing the same all across the country. For we have remembered Dana, we are remembering Dana, and we will remember Dana. And in remembering Dana, we will continue to draw from the living gift of her certainty, making us better able to carry out the work, the good work, Dana called on herself to do, and called on the rest of us to do.
And I have to believe that on this day, one so different from that cold and snowy day a few years ago at Dartmouth, that understanding, that revelation, that conviction is bringing a smile to Dana's face, and a twinkle to her eyes.
Linda Harrar, Independent Film Producer
Dana's death has affected me like no other I have ever experienced. I am usually quite a good sleeper, but I keep waking up in the middle of the night trying to come to terms with her loss–both what it means to me, but also to the world to lose her at this particular political moment when we are so in need of her vision.
I am a documentary filmmaker, mostly for PBS. I first met Dana 14 years ago when she served as an academic adviser to Race to Save the Planet, a ten-part PBS series produced by WGBH's NOVA Series and the Chedd-Angier Production Company. That series became the basis of a telecourse in environmental studies, and Dana was writing the text to accompany the series. She came to Boston and talked with our production team for the series, helping us to understand the issues of population and the environment. She reviewed our film treatments, scripts and rough cuts, and gave us a lot of tough but constructive criticism.
I remember she hated the title: "It's not a race," she said. "If anything, we should be slowing down! And we're not saving the planet. The planet will get along just fine without us--it's we who need to save ourselves!"
Since that time, we remained friends, and I've had a chance to experience her in action in the many concentric arenas of her life–teaching at Dartmouth, living on a cooperative farm, the Balaton group, but above all, through her writing. Her "Global Citizen" columns were about a wide range of political, environmental and social issues. She had the courage to write about difficult and unpopular subjects, and as one colleague said, "She showed us the outrageous joy that comes with speaking truth to power."
But what I shall miss the most are the letters from Dana. Those people who lived in regions where her column wasn't carried, like me, could subscribe to the columns and also receive a monthly newsletter about her very active life–her teaching, her farm, her books. There were stories of lambs being born, sheep escapes to neighbors' pastures, bread being baked, seeds being ordered, arrangements for the new Cobb Hill co-housing project, discussions with Monsanto executives, trips to Balaton…. She also shared her hopes and frustrations and above all, her enthusiasms. So I came to know her well through her fine art of friendship through letter writing.
I still can't quite believe I'm not going to get a letter saying, "Dear Folks, Sorry I've been out of touch. You won't believe what I've just been through. And just wait until I tell you what life is like here on the other side….!"
Since her death, messages and tributes from all around the world have been coursing through the Internet–such a flow of love and grief that has been truly amazing to behold, from Wangari Maathai in Kenya, Dmitri Kavtaradze in Moscow, on and on….
I shall always remember her generosity of spirit–how she would stop what she was doing to help me think about a documentary I was working on, or write grant proposals so that people from Tanzania and Thailand could get support for their work on sustainability. But at the same time, she was extremely personally productive in her writing, teaching and leading of various communities.
Her head of department at Dartmouth Jim Hornig wrote: "She was an important person in my life. There was part of me that would have liked to be like Dana–publicly outspoken and unabashedly idealistic, even though most of me was, well–like I am. So I supposed that by being associated with Dana and supporting her activities was a way I found to partially live that other life. Maybe part of her popularity came from the fact that she served that same function for lots of people."
Alan AtKisson, a fellow author, musician and Balaton Group member wrote: "Dana and I had a special relationship. She was at times my teacher, mentor, colleague, debate partner and cheerleader. She was a beacon to me, a guiding star. But I hasten to add I am by no means unique in this. There are literally hundreds of people who would describe their relationship with Dana in a special way. She leaves behind an enormous network of friends, from college students to scientists and decisionmakers. This web of human relationships will prove to be her most powerful legacy. "
This weekend there are gatherings to honor Dana in San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, Boston, and Hanover, New Hampshire. We don't often get to see ourselves at a distance, but isn't just this what Dana might have wished for–to realize that one life of such beauty and dedication could mean so much to so many people? She shows us how a single person can indeed change the world.
Above Dana's desk was a handwritten note the said "My writing is a search for truth. Every one of my readers is the key to the workability of the planet." So for those of you who haven't read her columns, they're still around–go to tidepool.org or sustainer.org. The power of her ideas is still all around us.
While Dana was deeply worried about the future of human civilization and the current environmental crisis, she was inherently an optimist. She believed in our ability to rise up together, to care for one another, to reinvent the world. Here's an excerpt from her last column, on the latest scientific reports on global warming:
"Can I give you any hope our world will not fall apart? Heck, I don't know. There's only one thing I do know. If we believe that it's effectively over, that we are fatally flawed and the most greedy and short-sighted among us will always be permitted to rule, then well yes, it's over. Personally I don't believe that stuff at all. Everyone I know wants polar bears and healthy three-year-olds. We are not helpless and there is nothing wrong with us except the strange belief that we are helpless. All we need to do is to stop letting that belief paralyze our minds, hearts and souls."
Last fall we lost David Brower, and Dana, writing about him, said, "Let us hope that his mighty soul will keep recycling back to us, thundering on, until we can absorb his wisdom." And now we must say the same for Dana.
I was speaking the other night with Pat Waak of Audubon. She said, "We're losing some of our best and brightest--David Brower last fall, now Dana–just when some of the most mediocre are assuming power. The saints are being called home. If this is not an apocalyptic moment, I'm not sure what is. It calls on all the rest of us to be more than what we have been–to step up to do what we can to extend their vision."
I don't know about you, but I'm going to be searching very hard to find the Dana in me, to keep her ideas and energetic spirit alive.
Les Kaufman, Professor, Boston University Marine Program
1990 Pew Scholar
The best thing that Dana taught me was about how to reconcile scientific discipline with emotional intensity. All good scientists have a passion for doing science, many for the science itself, and some for the art of conveying science to audiences of layfolk and future scientists. Dana covered each of these bases, in turn, and in spades. But in one respect, Dana was unlike any other scientist, environmentalist, or activist that I have ever met. The passion never had the least edge of having been "put on." It floated there, like a battleship on a sea of truth, and established for me a new high water mark in what it means to be a scientist with a social conscience.
I saw Dana mostly at annual meetings sponsored by the Pew Scholars Program, but we had lively and sometimes frequent interactions over email and phone. The first time that I really got "it" from her was at a meeting in Oregon. Or someplace. For ecologists we burn an awful lot of fuel getting to where we are going to sit together and discuss how to save it–one of Dana's favorite saws. A few dozen environmental scholar-activists were incarcerated in this room with a wonderful view of Mount Hood's receding glaciers and nearby conifer clearcuts. Or perhaps it was some other accident scene–wherever there's a resort suitable for a meeting, there's usually some reason to feel guilty about being there.
And there we were, arguing heatedly about the fate of the world, the technical difficulties of charming some fissioned broom back into the infernal closet from which it had been sprung by humanity's clumsy use of magic. The air in the room was full of that explosive mist of hard science volatilized by the heat of passion, just at flashpoint. So Dana gets up–she may have first put her knitting down–looks about the room, and begins to speak of systems dynamics. This we all feel pretty comfortable with and nod approvingly. After a little while, though, Dana shifts seamlessly into an increasingly animated treatise on love. Love. This is at a meeting of scientists and lawyers, mostly. Dana starts talking about people caring about other people instead of just the numbers. As she goes on, speaking clear and true as one would to a friend, so as not to be misunderstood, she would lock eyes with each person in the room, one by one. Those who felt the touch about midway through Dana's telepathic role call actually saw tears welling in her eyes. I'm thinking, "hold it together, girl, this is a workshop, not a damned prayer meeting." But before anybody could be positive what was happening, the tears evaporated like desert rain. And the message was there, pure and simple. And the message was an astonishing one.
Yes, the world is in trouble, that's old news. So who is to blame? At who do we vent our collective spleen, before who do we prance in placard-studded glory? Who is wrong, and must pay for their sins? Who is right and shall be sainted our leaders?
Nobody.
No body, no person.
It is nobody's fault. And people are basically good, full of the magical powers born of intellect. When their heads are screwed on straight, people are not deeply flawed.
The global system, however, is a godawful mess. We pretty much know how it got that way, but it doesn't really matter. All we have to do, is change some basic things about how the system works. Not us, the way we do things.
It is such an interesting message, and so radically different from any of the usual rants. The world is ending, humanity is the despoiler, we are selfish, greedy, shortsighted beings incapable of saving ourselves from ourselves- all nonsense in this view. Dana refused to blame it all on people. Blame lay in the system that we had built together, and that we are now sustaining very much against some of our better judgements. We were not flawed, but we do make mistakes…a lot of them, astonishing ones! Some of the institutions and ideas on which societies are currently based, are among the biggest mistakes we've ever made. But those kinds of mistakes can be corrected. If something is wrong about the way we are acting, this we can change.
Dana certainly had a knack for pinpointing what was wrong. By example, she taught us to let the data speak for themselves. And what, then, do the data say? Do they speak of derivatives, and coefficients? Or do they speak of happy faces in the playgrounds of the rich…right there- near the origin of our mathematical, post-industrial Eden? What about the rest of the graph? As the line arcs, crests, and slips–do you see the children's starved, bedraggled bodies strewn across earth's arid, ruined fields? Do you see those dots on the figure? Do you, or do you not understand that each dot is a hundred million human beings?
What Dana was saying, over and over again, was that humans are not hopeless. We do not have to change our basic nature, our selves. We are just fine. In our current global jam, this is the sweetest thing we could possibly hear, the very essence of hope. Okay, we've been very, very bad. But constitutionally we're basically good, and there's time enough to prove this to ourselves.
So: thank goodness we are relieved of the burden of having to fundamentally change our inner nature. But there is a catch. Now that we know this we have to do something about it. We have to because people live lives without purpose. We have to because children, mothers, fathers, loved ones are dying. We have to because our beautiful world is growing ugly. We have to, or else we are monsters, after all. The jury is still out, and we are on trial.
That is how I sometimes felt with Dana–softly, but firmly on trial. Dana held colleagues in her heart like wild creatures, in a loving, respectful, but decidedly firm embrace. Truly now, how many of us think of our hearts as resting places for our colleagues' souls? I don't know about you, but this kind of gentle, knowing reminder of who I was, emanating from Dana like a Dolphin's signature whistle each time we greeted, was most remarkable. It was a constant reminder that when you care for somebody, you want not only the best for them, but for them to be the best that they can. And so I found it impossible not to love Dana. This always invoked a vague sense of disorientation when I did touch base with her, on all too infrequent occasions. How could I feel so strongly about someone I really did not actually see that often?
This combination of reason and love in equal measure, compassion and intellect, made Dana the archtypical Earth Mother for the new century. It would sound good to say that this was a role that she played to the hilt, but it wasn't at all a role. This was just Dana herself. And this raises another interesting point about Dana as a role model. Remember that before seeking a new way to fulfill her vision of how she should live, Dana reached the top in academia–until very recently, and even still, by and large, a man's world. The side of being human that men are uncomfortable expressing, and that successful women so often hide in order to play as men, Dana put right out there, 24-7. Dana was a woman, by god. She would sit and knit in meetings. Once I was sure it started out as a sweater, but strangely, it turned into a pair of socks. Hal Hamilton says it was often socks, maybe because even long meetings could not be more than a few socks long…and apparently there are quite a few of these socks still walking about up at the Sustainability Institute. Dana never knit me any socks. She did me one better. The spiritual suit I wear before you today, the secrets of blending passion and truth into an elixir of action–this I learned partly under Dana's prodding, and this I shall wear proudly until I, too, return my borrowed meat and sugar to the earth. Dana built a strong trellis on which we all have climbed, bloomed profusely, and set seed. Let the fruits of our collective efforts, a beauty and peace of tomorrow's world, be her living legacy.
Dana, you have made us proud to show off our passion for this world to our more staid and stuffy colleagues. You have made us proud to admit that our science, however dispassionate in its practice, has a powerful backbeat, a deep limbic motivation, ultimately, in love. For with this insight, what we as scientists have to say to the rest of the world can at last be expressed in human terms, in human language. You have made us better scientists, better communicators, better politicians, and shown us just exactly where the truth must eventually come home to roost.
Ashley Lanfer, Dartmouth College Alumna
Unlike the other folks speaking today, I did not know Dana as a colleague. She was my teacher. Those of you who have never been one of Dana's students might be surprised to hear that this articulate, outspoken, passionate writer was enigmatic to us. She was. Many professors I know are more concerned with promoting their own point of view in a classroom than in helping students to develop theirs. Not Dana. In the environmental ethics class I took from her my senior year in college, Dana never gave us any "right answers" to ethical questions. And somewhere along the way my classmates and I stopped worrying about what the famous Professor Meadows thought. We even stopped worrying so much about our own opinions on abortion and population growth and endocrine disrupters.
Dana taught us to look at the whole picture.
In class we focused on a few of the world's super-charged environmental issues. We were bombarded with conflicting data and opinions. Dana called up loggers and activists, chemists and demographers and put them on speakerphone one by one so our class could talk with them about how they viewed the issue we were studying. We listened to the impassioned, contradictory stories of real people with legitimate concerns and felt increasingly bewildered. Then Dana taught us how to pick apart the problem. What were the indisputable facts that everyone involved would be able to agree on? What assumptions was each group making? What were the values that drove them to think and feel and act the way they did? At first my classmates and I were terrible at this. It was a new skill. Almost a new epistemology.
Dana got us thinking so holistically that we found ourselves venturing beyond the traditional boundaries of academia. One afternoon we sat around a table together and tried to dig down to the bedrock of ethics. "Who decides what is right?" Dana asked her class. "Is there an ethic that transcends culture?" Before I could check myself, I blurted out, "You're asking us whether God exists!" The moment I said it I knew I had made a terrible mistake. Saying the word "God" in a Dartmouth classroom is simply not done. I turned a deep shade of scarlet and stammered out a disclaimer. Later on that day, Dana saw me in the pocket library near her office. She came in, sat down in the armchair next to me, and said, "Its scary to say the words "God" and "Love" out loud here, Ashley. Don't let that stop you. In the end, God and Love are what this is all about."
Obviously, this was a moment when Dana blew her cover. Over the course of the semester, she gave us a few other windows into the way she saw the world. She invited the whole class over to watch the movie Ghandi. She gave us carrots from her organic garden to munch while we watched. She had us read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. She was also the first professor any of us had ever had who asked us to assign ourselves a grade for a class and then tell her why we thought we deserved it. Dana's approach to teaching gave us hints about who she was and what she believed, but I was thirsty for more. I began collecting little bits of information about her life. I wanted to know everything. What she had been like when she was my age, what she cared about, what made her happy, what her home and family were like.
What I learned was actually quite disconcerting. Until I met Dana, I figured that if I was unhappy about global inequity, if I felt over-consumption was wrong, I was doing about as much as anybody could. The problems were, after all, so enormous. But while I was looking at them and feeling insignificant and powerless, Dana was doing something about them. Here was a woman whose life mirrored her convictions. And she seemed to be changing the world on every level–from the soil in her garden and the health of her neighbors all the way to the United Nations and the fate of the planet. When Dana said she was worried about population growth, she backed it up by helping raise other peoples' children, but never having her own. I mean, the woman milked her own cows! Dana's radical commitment to her beliefs and values affected me profoundly. Suddenly, I had no excuses. Here was a person who gave flesh and bone answers to the problems I had been content to contemplate.
Knowing that Dana existed in the world was not easy. Knowing that she is no longer in this world is much, much more difficult.
At the end of the school term, Dana reverently handed each of us a fold-up poster of the 1996 UN World Population Statistics. Dana was passionate about statistics. Inequity. Child mortality. Literacy rates. Birth rates. What for most people was a mind- numbing matrix of numbers in rows and columns was for Dana a to-do list. That fall after our final class, I stared at the numbers and tried to see them the way Dana did. I stared until I could imagine the people that the numbers represented. I felt them living and breathing and laughing and crying out there in the world. I took the fold-up UN poster with me when I moved to rural Kenya to start my first job after college. I must have pulled that thing out dozens of times in Africa. I talked about the numbers with many of my friends and colleagues there. I still have that poster. And the statistics still haunt me and spur me to action. Now, as a graduate student in Environmental Science, I help teach a class in the same problems of population growth and the environment that Dana taught me to analyze.
Dana's life has been folded into the lives of her students in ways that we can only begin to understand and articulate. On behalf of her students, I'd like to say "Dana, we thank God for your life. And we love you."
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