On Growth

[p. XI]

Foreword: The Club of Rome

With man at the pinnacle of his knowledge and power, a profound malaise is spreading through human society. Faced with an increasingly more complex and ever-changing tangle of intertwined problems - some of them overarching all political, cultural and geographical boundaries - mankind is threatened by an unprecedented crisis.

Thirty European scientists, humanists, educators and managers met in April, 1968, at the Academy of Lincei in Rome, to discuss how this world problématique could be understood and met. Some of them pledged to stay together as an informal group, and to coopt people of vision and action from all continents, cultures and value systems, who shared their conviction that traditional institutions and policies are no longer able to cope with this situation or even to perceive its trends.

This group is known as the Club of Rome. Its members can number one hundred as a maximum. None of them is involved in current political decisions, nor has the club as a whole any ideological, political or national commitments, although many of its members have access to decision makers and have great stores of information and knowledge to draw upon.

The Club of Rome has two main objectives: One is to stimulate research and reflections aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the workings of the global systems; during the first phase, this activity has been centered around the study of limits to growth, which is being discussed in this book as its main theme. The second objective is to use

[p. XII]

the insight so acquired to promote new policies and strategies inspired by a new humanism and capable of setting mankind on a saner course.

Aurelio Peccei¹

Founder and Chairman of the Club of Rome

1 See also the concluding conversation to this book.