Club of Rome

The Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR) was founded in Toronto in 1973. CACOR identifies itself as "one of over twenty national associations whose members have interests in common with The Europe-based Club of Rome, an international organization founded in 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist, along with Alexander King, a British scientist, and some 30 other scientists, educators, industrialists, and international civil servants gathered in Rome to share their concerns for the complex of global problems, which they named the 'world problematique' - the predicament of humankind."

According to the European-based Club of Rome's web site, the Club of Rome is a "global think tank and centre of innovation and initiative. As a non-profit, non governmental organisation (NGO), it brings together 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 meeting at the Accademia dei Lincei was not a success, partly due to the difficulty of the participants to focus on a distant future. After the meeting, there was an informal gathering of a few people in Peccei’s home, which included Erich Jantsch, Alexander King, and Hugo Thieman. The Club of Rome grew out of this meeting of minds and people who were focused on the same problem." They are a founding partner of the Creating the New Civilization Initiative which was launched in 2005.

Criticism
Robert Golub and Joe Townsend write in their article "Malthus, multinationals and the Club of Rome," Social Studies of Science, 7, (1977) that:


 * "Our argument is that, during the decade of the sixties, the international economic (and many national financial) systems became increasingly unstable and the systems by which the advanced countries control and dominate the underdeveloped countries were growing more fragile..., at the same time as (and in some cases as a result of) the multinational firms were becoming more significant in the international and national economies. These increasing instabilities and uncertainties made the economic environment more threatening to the multinational firms themselves, and this situation was initially and most strongly perceived by those 'second rank' multinationals whose governments were too weak to adequately provide the 'public functions' listed by Murray. As a result of this, the Forrester and Meadows 'scientific' studies were commissioned as 'tools of communication and control' to operate the 'transmission pulley' of public opinion in order to force the governments of the industrialized societies to institute a 'new world moderator' (with 'stern rules about voting') which would have sufficient power to stabilize the international economic situation and ensure a constant supply of raw materials." (p.216)

Critical Resources

 * Robert Golub and Joe Townsend write in their article "Malthus, multinationals and the Club of Rome," Social Studies of Science, 7, (1977).
 * Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, "The Club of Rome and the Sustainability Movement", Dissident Voice, April 21, 2012. In this article Bramhall suggests that Norman Cousins, Betty Friedan, Jean Houston, and Amory Lovins were intial members of COR, but when emailed it turned out that she has no evidence for this other than the conspiracy articles that she critiques.

Mission
Club of Rome website:
 * "The Club of Rome's mission is to act as a global catalyst of change that is free of any political, ideological or business interest ... The Club of Rome contributes to the solution of what it calls the world problematique, the complex set of the most crucial problems - political, social, economic, technological, environmental, psychological and cultural - facing humanity ...

It does so taking a global, long term and interdisciplinary perspective aware of the increasing interdependence of nations and the globalisation of problems that pose predicaments beyond the capacity of individual countries."

Publications

 * The Limits to Growth by Donella and Dennis Meadows et al, 1972.
 * Mankind at the Turning Point by M. Mesarovic and E. Pestel, 1974.
 * Reshaping the International Order by Jan Tinbergen, 1976.
 * The First Global Revolution by A. King and B. Schneider, 1992.

Executive Committee
Accessed April 2012:


 * Eberhard von Koerber
 * Roberto Peccei
 * Anders Wijkman
 * Ashok Khosla
 * Ricardo Díez-Hochleitner
 * Ian Johnson (COR)
 * Isidro Fainé Casas
 * Sheila Anne Murray
 * Alexander Likhotal
 * Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker
 * Konrad Osterwalder
 * Heitor Gurgulino de Souza

Executive Committee (2004)

 * HRH Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, President
 * Ricardo Diez-Hochleitner, Honorary President
 * Eberhard von Koerber, Vice-President
 * Uwe Möller, Secretary General

Members
 * Ruth Bamela Engo-Tjega
 * Orhan Güvenen
 * Ashok Khosla
 * Patrick Liedtke
 * Roseann Runte
 * Raoul Weiler

Honorary Members
Accessed April 2012:


 * Emeka Anyaoku, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Karan Singh, Mihajlo D. Mesarovic, Mohamed Kassas, Orio Giarini, Pentti Malaska, Sadako Ogata, Yehezkel Dror, H.E. Arpad Göncz, H.E. César Gaviria, H.E. Dr. Manmohan Singh, H.E. Dr. Mario Soares, H.E. Dr. Ruth Bamela Engo-Tjega, H.E. Eduard Shevardnadze, H.E. Jacques Delors, Doña Sophia, H.M. Juan Carlos I, H.M. Queen Beatrix, H.R.H. Prince Philippe, Lord George Weidenfeld, André Danzin, Daisaku Ikeda, Enrique Iglesias, Helio Jaguaribe de Mattos, Jose Angel Sanchez Asiain, José Ignacio Berroeta, Koïchiro Matsuura, Zdzislaw L. Sadowski, Hazel Henderson, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Antoni Kuklinski, B. F. Paton, Eleonora Barbieri Masini, Frits Böttcher, Hugo Thiemann, Jay W. Forrester, Manfred A. Max-Neef, Mircea Malitza, Candido Mendes de Almeida, Belisario Betancur, Carlos Robles Piquer, Ernesto Zedillo, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Frederick F. Chien, Luis A. Lacalle Herrera, Mauno Koivisto,  Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard von Weizsäcker, Ruud F.M. Lubbers

Honorary Members (U.S.)
University of New Hampshire
 * Harlan B. Cleveland
 * Jay W. Forrester, MIT
 * H.E.César Gaviria, Secertary General, Organisation of American States
 * Enrique Iglesias, President, Inter-American Development Bank
 * Dennis Meadows, Director, Institute of Policy and Social Science Research,
 * Ms. Sadako Ogata, Co-Chair, Commission on Human Security (United Nations)

Contact
CLUB OF ROME Rissener Landstr. 193 22559 Hamburg, Germany Tel. +49 40 81960714 Fax +49 40 81960715 Email info@clubofrome.org URL: http://www.clubofrome.org

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