Donella Meadows Down to Earth

Meadows’ celebrated 1994 address to the International Society for Ecological Economics in San José, Costa Rica — later circulated as the essay “Envisioning a Sustainable World.” Departing from her prepared talk, she asks the audience of scientists and economists to do something their training forbids: describe, concretely, the world they actually want. Her argument is that vision is the most vital and least discussed step in the policy process — we are fluent in diagnosing what is wrong and mute about what we are for. It remains the best short statement of why analysis alone never changes a system.