Club of Rome: Encyclopedia - Club of Rome

Club of Rome

The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues.

Club of Rome - Introduction

The Club of Rome was founded in April 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, an Italian scholar and industrialist, and Alexander King, a Scottish scientist. The Club of Rome raised considerable public attention with its report The Limits to Growth, which has sold 30 million copies in more than 30 translations making it the best selling environment book in world history. The report was published in 1972, which predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly oil. The oil crisis of 1973 increased public concern about this problem.

At that time the Club of Rome had an informal "inner group" of six but had no corporate existence. The inner group consisted of:

• Aurelio Peccei.
• Alexander King.
• Hugo Thiemann, Director of the Batelle Institute in Geneva.
• Max Kohnstamm (Netherlands), former Secretary General of the ECSC.
• Jean Saint-Geours, Ministry of Finance in Paris.
• Erich Jantsch, author of "Technological Forecasting".

Club of Rome - Organisation

According to its website, it 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."

Jordanian Prince El Hassan bin Talal is the current President of The Club of Rome.

Some other active members are: Benjamin Bassin, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Juan Luis Cebrian, Orio Giarini, Talal Halman, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, José Sarney, Javier Solana, Mugur Isărescu , Manmohan Singh, Kamal Hossain, Esko Kalimo, Ashok Khosla, Martin Lees, Roberto Peccei, Maria Ramirez Ribes, Victor A. Sadovnichy, Keith Suter, Majid Tehranian, Raoul Weiler, Anders Wijkman, and Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 2001 the Club of Rome created the tt30, a Young Think Tank with people around the age of 30. Its Internet site is tt30

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.

Club of Rome - Criticism

Critics have charged the Club of Rome with "Neo-Malthusianism" and strong elitism in its membership which interlocks with European power elite groups such as Bilderberg and to a lesser degree Anglo-American elite members.

Furthermore some critics dismiss the Club's warnings as motivated by a left-leaning political agenda, rather than scientific fact.

Conspiracy theorists occasionally link the Club with various world conspiracies, notably the New World Order.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Club of Rome", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki