Fifty years after the Club of Rome, the limits of growth

The Club of Rome consisted of an international group of prominent businessmen and academics were very concerned about “the predicament of mankind” — the predicament of humanity's predicament. They had engaged Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) system scientists to work through a number of future scenarios using a computer — breaking ground at that time. The Club originally consisted of 36 members, who first met in Rome in April 1968. The establishment of the Club of Rome was initiated by the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and the Scottish scientist Alexander King . From 1968, the company met each year in a different country to talk about the environment. The Club of Rome has released several reports on the environment, of which The limits to growth are the most famous.

The apocalyptic vistas that the Club of Rome saw in 1972 are current and urgent again. Dennis Gabor only participated in one of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and gave only one lecture. But the message of his speech is so important that one would like to hear it every year. The title of his speech at the Lindau meeting is actually taken from the first prospect of the Club of Rome, and he later also co-authored more formal reports.

In his speech, Gabor describes how computer simulations sponsored by the Club point to some of the serious problems that civilization faces: overcrowding, overconsumption, depletion of natural resources, and pollution. According to the simulations, if these problems were not resolved, there would be a world catastrophe around the year 2050. Even in this 1973 lecture, global warming and the melting of the Arctic snow caps are considered a risk.

1972: The limits to growth appear. Especially in the Netherlands, the first report by the Club of Rome strikes as a bomb. To keep the Earth livable, we need to control economic growth, prominent politicians proclaim.

1992: We have already crossed borders, the scientists conclude twenty years later. Yet there is global optimism: innovation and market forces will remedy our environmental problems.