As one feels one’s way through the environmental and political darkness in West Virginia many of us would feel indeed deprived without the beacon of the Charleston Gazette. But this is not to extol the virtues of the Gazette, but to convey an appreciation for the fact that I was introduced to the marvelous columns of Donella Meadows through its pages. I shared her environmental vision, and felt she was speaking most eloquently for me and others who care about the earth and all its natural forms, living or otherwise.

So it was with both profound shock and grief when I learned that she had died of bacterial meningitis on February 20. Within several months the natural world has lost two of its most stalwart and articulate promoters of Earth – first David Brower and now Donella Meadows. David had lived a long full life full of accomplishment; Donella was just arriving at the height of her powers so hers is the greater tragedy.

In 1968 Donella, or Dana as she came to be called, got her Ph. D. from Harvard in biophysics. She went on to teach at Dartmouth College where she became a tenured professor. She served in this capacity from 1972 to 1983 when she resigned to devote more time to her writing and activism. She made her impressive debut to the environmental movement in 1972 with the book, The Limits to Growth, where she was the principle author. Occupationally she has been described as a systems analyst, gardener, syndicated columnist, wool sheep raiser and college professor.

As a scientist, her arguments were always rational, based on the latest scientific studies. She was willing to listen to the opposition and to dialogue with them without recrimination. She got into painful discussions with an admired fellow scientist about genetic engineering, and was told by him in a way that completely missed the point of her arguments, "I guess it’s okay with you if people starve." She went on to explain to him in depth how everyone could eat famously without using pesticides and without bioengineered "franken foods."

According to a former colleague at Dartmouth, Robert Braile, "...I will remember Dana for living what she believed. She abided by the highest standards for what a teacher, environmentalist and environmental journalist should be, willing a fiercely principled life that I looked on with wonder. She was one of the few people I have known who refused to compromise, whether it be about what should happen in the classroom or what should happen in the world."

People with a reasonably well-developed conscience, and the intelligence and sensitivity to have an accurate world view on the environmental state of the planet, tend to suffer despair these days. Raphael Ezekiel says that the cure for environmental despair is environmental activism. One with the intensity of these qualities as had Dana must have been driven by the Furies to maintain her own sanity. She must have felt a terrible burden to commit her every waking hour to doing the best she could to try and head off what she saw as impending doom. She was getting precious little help -- there were tens of thousands of her fellow human critters hell bent on destroying the planet through exploitation, and millions of "deadbeats" who had a glimmer of what was happening but chose to do nothing about it. Unfortunately, too many of the truly wise persons today like Dana are in Cassandra roles and must feel the full frustration of it.

In more recent months, perhaps in reaction to finding our nation being pushed by our new national leadership into the abyss of perdition, she began to take the gloves off so to speak. I was delighted when she assumed a more angry posture in a recent column about this leadership, and actually said in conclusion, "But the point of it – okay here’s the point – the point is, this political system sucks. The issues and concerns of the people are squeezed out by the issues and concerns of the centralized money-makers. The country runs on money-making at the expense of all other purposes and values."

In an even more recent column, alerted to the probable demise of the polar bear because of the loss of the arctic ice sheets, one could almost feel that she was fighting for her emotional life with more and more extreme bad environmental news coming in daily.

"Is there any way to end this column other than in gloom? Can I give my friend, you, any honest hope that our world will not fall apart? Does our only possible future consist of watching the disappearance of the polar bear, the whale, the elephant, the redwood tree, the coral reef, while fearing for the three-year old [referring to the fact that the three-year olds of the world are already laden with man-made toxins stored in their bodies]

"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, that the most greedy and shortsighted among us will always be permitted to rule, that we can never constrain our consumption and destruction, that each of us is too small and helpless to do anything, that we should just give up and enjoy our SUV’s while they last – that’s the one way of believing and behaving that gives us a guaranteed outcome.

"Personally, I don’t believe that stuff at all. I don’t see myself or the people around me as fatally flawed. Everyone I know wants polar bears and three-year olds in our world. We are not helpless and the is nothing wrong with us. All we need to do, for the bear and for ourselves, is to stop letting that belief paralyze our minds, hearts and souls."