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Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course.
Donella Meadows
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Interpretation

What this quote means

An environmental revolution demands sacrifices for significant benefits over time.

This quote by Donella Meadows emphasizes the transformative potential of an environmental revolution, suggesting that while it requires significant sacrifices and may take a long time to manifest, the changes it invokes can fundamentally reshape our world, including our institutions and cultures. However, it also acknowledges the uncertainty of such a revolution actually occurring, underscoring that such a future is not guaranteed.

Themes

EnvironmentRevolutionChangeSacrificeGainInstitutionsCulture

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech on climate action, one might say, 'Like the other great revolutions, remember that an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains.'

More from Donella Meadows

Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
Donella MeadowsRead
There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.
Donella MeadowsRead
Speak the truth._x000D_ Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently,_x000D_ and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power._x000D_ Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence._x000D_ All growth is not good._x000D_ The environment is a necessity, not a luxury._x000D_ There is such a thing as enough.
Donella MeadowsRead
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 MeadowsRead
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 MeadowsRead
A vision should be judged by the clarity of its values, not the clarity of its implementation path [in Mediated Modeling page 43]
Donella MeadowsRead

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