The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing global issues.
[citation needed] In April 1968, Peccei and King convened a small international group of people from the fields of academia, civil society, diplomacy, and industry met at Villa Farnesina in Rome.
The background paper to set the tone of the meeting was entitled "A tentative framework for initiating system wide planning of world scope", by Austrian OECD consultant Erich Jantsch.
The symposium focused on the dangers of exponential growth—which by its nature cannot continue forever—and ended with participants signing "The Bellagio Declaration on Planning", which emphasized the need to overcome global problems through coordination.
[7] Published in 1972, its computer simulations suggested that growth of production and consumption could not continue indefinitely because of either resource depletion or unmanageable levels of pollution.
A 1973 booklet on the OECD's approach to environmental issues stated that the role of governments in "an acceptable human environment must now be developed in the framework of policies for economic growth".
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.
...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.
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.
[citation needed] The same year, co-presidents Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Anders Wijkman collaborated with over 30 members to publish "Come On!
[citation needed] This publication advocated for profound changes in the interactions between governments, businesses, financial systems, innovators, and families to foster sustainable planetary stewardship.
[14] Full members engage in the research activities, projects, and contribute to decision-making processes during the club's annual general assembly.
Notable honorary members include Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, Orio Giarini, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Mikhail Gorbachev, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, Horst Köhler, and Manmohan Singh.
[23] 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.
Led by the Club of Rome, the BI Norwegian Business School and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a group of researchers and policymakers assessed global risks and identified five pathways to catalyze transformation and systemic change towards sustainability: energy, food, poverty, inequality and population (including health and education).
Economist Robert Solow, recipient of a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, criticized The Limits to Growth (LTG) as having "simplistic" scenarios.
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.
"[29] An analysis of the world model used for The Limits to Growth in 1976 by mathematicians Vermeulen and De Jongh has shown it to be "very sensitive to small parameter variations" and having "dubious assumptions and approximations".
The Sussex scientists also wrote that the Dennis Meadows et al. methods, data, and predictions were faulty, that their world models (and their Malthusian bias) did not accurately reflect reality.
The report arrived at similar conclusions regarding expected global resource scarcity, and the need for multilateral coordination to prepare for this situation.
"[36] In 2020, econometrician Gaya Herrington published a study in the Yale University's Journal of Industrial Ecology which concluded that all economic data since the 1970s was consistent with the World3 BAU scenario in Limits to Growth, which could mean that rapid degrowth would occur after 2040.