- Club of Rome
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The Club of Rome 
Type Non-profit
NGOFounded 1968 by Aurelio Peccei and Alexander King
Co- Presidents: Dr. Ashok Khosla and Dr. Eberhard von Koerber
New Secretary General: Ian Johnson[disambiguation needed
]
Retiring Secretary General: Martin LeesLocation Winterthur, Canton Zurich, Switzerland Method Climate Change, Future studies, Humanitarian challenges
Current focus: New Path for World DevelopmentWebsite http://www.clubofrome.org The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. Founded in 1968 at David Rockefeller’s estate in Bellagio, Italy, the CoR describes itself as "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." It 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.[1] It raised considerable public attention in 1972 with its report The Limits to Growth. The club states that its mission is "to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public."[2] Since 1 July 2008, the organization has its headquarters in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Contents
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 a villa in Rome, Italy, hence the name.
Hasan Özbekhan, Erich Jantsch and Alexander Christakis were responsible for conceptualizing the original prospectus of the Club of Rome titled "The Predicament of Mankind.[3]"
The Club of Rome raised considerable public attention with its report Limits to Growth, which has sold 12 million copies in more than 30 translations, making it the best-selling environmental book in world history.[4] Published in 1972 and presented for the first time at the International Students' Committee (ISC) annual Management Symposium in St. Gallen, Switzerland, it predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly oil. The 1973 oil crisis increased public concern about this problem. However, even before 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 1000 in the Meadows model). The research had the full support of the Club and the 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 predictions of the original Limits to Growth and gave a more optimistic prognosis for the future of the environment, noting that many of the factors were within human control and therefore that environmental and economic catastrophe were preventable or avoidable, hence the title.
In 1993, the Club published The First Global Revolution.[5] According to this book, divided nations require common enemies to unite them, "either a real one or else one invented for the purpose."[6] Because of the sudden absence of traditional enemies, "new enemies must be identified."[6] "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."[7]
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."
As of August 2008, the Club has two Co-Presidents, Dr. Ashok Khosla of India and Dr. Eberhard von Koerber of Germany, and two Vice-Presidents, Professor Heitor Gurgulino de Souza of Brazil and Dr. Anders Wijkman of Sweden. The Secretary-General is Martin Lees of Scotland. As of 1 January 2008 he has been responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Club at its headquarters in Winterthur, Switzerland. Other active members include: Benjamin Bassin, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Juan Luis Cebrian, Orio Giarini, Talat Halman, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Javier Solana, Mugur Isărescu, Kamal Hossain, Esko Kalimo, Ashok Khosla, Martin Lees, Roberto Peccei, Maria Ramirez Ribes, Victor A. Sadovnichy, Keith Suter, Majid Tehranian, Raoul Weiler, and Mikhail Gorbachev.[citation needed]
The Annual Meeting of 2005 took place in Norfolk, Virginia, at Old Dominion University. It was held for the first time with members of the young think tank tt30.
National associations
There are national CoR associations in many nations[citation needed], including a number of European nations, USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Asian nations. These associations analyze national problems in terms of the same factors and give advice nationally to decision-makers.[citation needed]
Current Activities
In 2009, the organization established a three-year program on "A New Path for World Development". In a flyer describing the project, it declared "The global issues which were the focus of the 1972 Report, “Limits to Growth” are even more severe and urgent today." The project has five issue areas: Environment and Resources, Globalization, International Development, Social Transformation, and Peace and Security.[8]
Notable members
- Hans-Peter Dürr
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Mugur Isărescu
- Erich Jantsch, author of Technological Forecasting (†)
- Derrick de Kerckhove
- Alexander King (†)
- Max Kohnstamm (Netherlands), former Secretary General of the ECSC(†)
- David Korten
- Dennis Meadows
- Donella Meadows
- Mihajlo D. Mesarovic
- George P. Mitchell
- Aurelio Peccei (†)
- Jean Saint-Geours, Ministry of Finance in Paris
- Hugo Thiemann, Director of the Battelle Memorial Institute in Geneva
- Pierre Elliott Trudeau (†)
- Robert Uffen (†)
- Frederic Vester (†)
- Ivo Slaus
See also
The British science magazine New Scientist reported on 19 November 2008 a study by the research organisation CSIRO in Australia found "changes in industrial production, food production and pollution are all in line with the Club of Rome's predictions".[9]
- Futures studies
- Harlan Cleveland - DIKW
- The Limits to Growth
- Authors: Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and W.W. Behrens, Jr.
- Peak Oil
- The Revenge of Gaia
- Survivalism
References
- ^ http://www.green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html
- ^ [1] Club of Rome - Organization
- ^ http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/Predicament.PTI.pdf
- ^ 30-Year Update of Limits to Growth finds global society in “Overshoot,” Foresees social, economic, and environmental decline (The Club of Rome)
- ^ Alexander King & Bertrand Schneider - The First Global Revolution (Club of Rome) 1993 Edition
- ^ a b Alexander King & Bertrand Schneider. The First Global Revolution (The Club of Rome), 1993. p. 70
- ^ King & Schneider, p. 115
- ^ [http://clubofrome.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CoR_Flyer_090605.pdf The Programme of the Club of Rome on A New Path for World Development, downloaded Sept. 11, 2011
- ^ Forecast of economic collapse backed by data New Scientist magazine 19 November 2008
External links
- Club of Rome - official website
- Club of Rome Reports and Bifurcations, a 40-year overview 17 March 2010 / Draft
- Analysis of "Limits to Growth" by Australian Broadcasting Corporation from 1999
- [2] - Turner G. 2008. A Comparison of The Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality. Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED). CSIRO Working Paper Series Number 2008-09. June 2008. ISSN 1834-5638. 52 pp.
- The Green Agenda of Club of Rome
Categories:- Anticipatory thinking
- Futurology
- Oceanography
- Organizations established in 1968
- 20th-century Rome
- 1968 establishments in Italy
- Political and economic think tanks based in Europe
- Recipients of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
- Globalism
- Winterthur
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