 | |
| Founded | 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, Alexander King Co- Presidents: Sandrine Dixson-Declève and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-profit NGO |
| Location | |
| Fields | Global warming, Well-being, Humanitarian challenges |
| Website | ClubOfRome.org |
Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the Club of Rome consists of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe. It stimulated considerable public attention in 1972 with the first report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth. Since 1 July 2008 the organization has been based in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Formation
The Club of Rome was founded in April 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist, and Alexander King, a Scottish scientist.
It was formed when a small international group of people from the
fields of academia, civil society, diplomacy, and industry met at Villa Farnesina in Rome, hence the name.
The problématique
Central to the formation of the club was Peccei's concept of the problematic.
It was his opinion that viewing the problems of mankind—environmental
deterioration, poverty, endemic ill-health, urban blight,
criminality—individually, in isolation or as "problems capable of being
solved in their own terms", was doomed to failure. All are interrelated.
"It is this generalized meta-problem (or meta-system of problems) which we have called and shall continue to call the "problematic" that inheres in our situation."
In 1970, Peccei's vision was laid out in a document written by Hasan Özbekhan, Erich Jantsch, and Alexander Christakis. Entitled, The Predicament of Mankind; Quest for Structured Responses to Growing Worldwide Complexities and Uncertainties: A PROPOSAL. The document would serve as the roadmap for the LTG project.
The Limits to Growth
The Club of Rome stimulated considerable public attention with the first report to the club, The Limits to Growth. Published in 1972, its computer simulations suggested that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of resource depletion. The 1973 oil crisis
increased public concern about this problem. The report went on to sell
30 million copies in more than 30 languages, making it the best-selling
environmental book in history.
Even before The Limits to Growth was published, Eduard Pestel and Mihajlo Mesarovic of Case Western Reserve University
had begun work on a far more elaborate model (it distinguished ten
world regions and involved 200,000 equations compared with 1,000 in the
Meadows model). The research had the full support of the club and its
final publication, Mankind at the Turning Point was accepted as the official "second report" to the Club of Rome in 1974. In addition to providing a more refined regional breakdown, Pestel and
Mesarovic had succeeded in integrating social as well as technical data.
The second report revised the scenarios of the original Limits to Growth
and gave a more optimistic prognosis for the future of the environment,
noting that many of the factors involved were within human control and
therefore that environmental and economic catastrophe were preventable
or avoidable.
In 1991, the club published The First Global Revolution.
It analyses the problems of humanity, calling these collectively or in
essence the "problematique". It notes that, historically, social or
political unity has commonly been motivated by enemies in common: "The
need for enemies seems to be a common historical factor. Some states
have striven to overcome domestic failure and internal contradictions by
blaming external enemies. The ploy of finding a scapegoat is as old as
mankind itself—when things become too difficult at home, divert
attention to adventure abroad. Bring the divided nation together to face
an outside enemy, either a real one, or else one invented for the
purpose. With the disappearance of the traditional enemy, the temptation
is to use religious or ethnic minorities as scapegoats, especially
those whose differences from the majority are disturbing.
"Every state has been so used to classifying its neighbours as friend
or foe, that the sudden absence of traditional adversaries has left
governments and public opinion with a great void to fill. New enemies
have to be identified, new strategies imagined, and new weapons
devised."
"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water
shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality
and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat
which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these
dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already
warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is
only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then is humanity itself."
In 2001 the Club of Rome established a think tank, called tt30,
consisting of about 30 men and women, ages 25–35. It aimed to identify
and solve problems in the world, from the perspective of youth.
A study by Graham Turner of the research organisation CSIRO
in Australia in 2008 found that "30 years of historical data compare
favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the
"standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system
midway through the 21st century."
Organization
According
to its website, the Club of Rome is composed of "scientists,
economists, businessmen, international high civil servants, heads of
state and former heads of state from all five continents who are
convinced that the future of humankind is not determined once and for
all and that each human being can contribute to the improvement of our
societies."
The Club of Rome is a membership organization and has different membership categories.
Full members engage in the research activities, projects, and
contribute to decision-making processes during the Club's annual general
assembly. Of the full members, 12 are elected to form the executive
committee, which sets the general direction and the agenda.
Of the executive committee, two are elected as co-presidents and two as
vice-presidents. The secretary-general is elected from the members of
the executive committee. The secretary-general is responsible for the
day-to-day operation of the club from its headquarters in Winterthur,
Switzerland. Aside from full members there are associate members, who
participate in research and projects, but have no vote in the general
assembly.
The club also has honorary members. Notable honorary members include Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, Orio Giarini, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Mikhail Gorbachev, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, Horst Köhler, and Manmohan Singh.
The annual general assembly of 2016 took place in Berlin on 10–11
November. Among the guest speakers were former German President Christian Wulff, German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Müller, as well as Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.
National associations
The Club has national associations in 35 countries and territories.
The mission of the national associations is to spread the ideas and
vision in their respective countries, to offer solutions and to lobby
for a more sustainable and just economy in their nations, and to support
the international secretariat of the Club with the organization of
events, such as the annual general assembly.
Current activities
As of 2017 there have been 43 reports to the club.
These are peer-reviewed studies commissioned by the executive
committee, or suggested by a member or group of members, or by outside
individuals and institutions. The most recent is Come On! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet.
In 2016, the club initiated a new youth project called "Reclaim
Economics". With this project they support students, activists,
intellectuals, artists, video-makers, teachers, professors and others to
"shift the teaching of economics away from the mathematical
pseudo-science it has become."
On 14 March 2019, the Club of Rome issued an official statement in support of Greta Thunberg and the school strikes for climate, urging governments across the world to respond to this call for action and cut global carbon emissions.
Critics
Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Solow criticized The Limits to Growth
as having "simplistic" scenarios. He has also been a vocal critic of
the Club of Rome, ostensibly for amateurism. He has said that "the one
thing that really annoys me is amateurs making absurd statements about
economics, and I thought that the Club of Rome was nonsense. Not because
natural resources or environmental necessities might not at some time
pose a limit, not on growth, but on the level of economic activity—I
didn't think that was a nonsensical idea—but because the Club of Rome
was doing amateur dynamics without a license, without a proper
qualification. And they were doing it badly, so I got steamed up about
that."
An analysis of the world model used for The Limits to Growth
by mathematicians Vermeulens and Jongh shown it to be "very sensitive
to small parameter variations" and having "dubious assumptions and
approximations".
An interdisciplinary team at Sussex University's Science Policy
Research Unit reviewed the structure and assumptions of the models used
and published its finding in Models of Doom; showing that the
forecasts of the world's future are very sensitive to a few unduly
pessimistic key assumptions. The Sussex scientists also claim that the
Meadows et al. methods, data, and predictions are faulty, that their
world models (and their Malthusian bias) do not accurately reflect
reality.
