On Growth

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70. Aurelio Peccei

At his request, this last and concluding conversation was reserved for Aurelio Peccei, chairman and founder of the Club of Rome.
Aurelio Peccei was born in Torino, Italy, in 1908. He received his doctorate summa cum laude at the University of Torino.
In 1930 he joined the Fiat Automobile Company. He was sent to China prior to World War II. Since 1950 he has been a member of the management committee of Fiat. He has been head of the Latin American division and chairman of the board of Fiat Concord in Argentina (one of the largest industries in Latin America).
At present he is also managing director of Italconsult, one of the foremost engineering and consulting firms in the world, with headquarters in Rome.
From 1964 to 1967 he was appointed president and chief executive of the Olivetti Company. On completing his mission he was retained in 1967 as vice-chairman. Dr. Peccei is also founder of Adela, an international investment company created to promote development and private initiative in Latin America. He is chairman of the economic committee of the Atlantic Institute in Paris.
In 1968 Aurelio Peccei founded the Club of Rome.¹
Parts of Dr. Peccei's remarks have appeared in a special report prepared by Dr. Peccei with the collaboration of Dr. Manfred Siebker, at the request of the economic committee of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe.

It must have been a sad experience for you, after the enormous effort and work put into The Limits to Growth, to find so much criticism and abuse, especially in the beginning when the study became known.

Not at all. Only a fool does not expect criticism and abuse when he caricatures or satirizes self-righteous mores, or exposes false values and takes a radical stand against conventional wisdom - or demystifies nothing less than the sacred goddess of growth presiding over our mer-

1 See also conversation no. 16.

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cantile society. In other times, it would have been even worse - lapidation or crucifixion. It is not that the Club of Rome has the vocation of martyrdom. It is simply determined to raise the devil out of the climate of complacency and improvidence which accompanies our collective race towards ever graver crises. When it asked MIT to run this project, it believed that the time had come to bring world public opinion and decision makers face to face with the extreme alternatives of our age.

I for one welcome even the most bitter criticism as a part of the ordeal our generation has to go through to reappraise realistically the changed condition of man in his world; though I feel unhappy that only marginal, episodic or sectoral criticism has so far been leveled at the MIT report. No critic has yet disproved the existence of a fundamental mismatch between headlong human proliferation and insatiability, which are dominant traits of present-day society, and our planet's limited, vulnerable carrying capacity.

I want, moreover, to say that no criticism has in any way weakened the importance of the MIT pilot world-simulation model as a tool to break down a situation of stagnant, wishful thinking. The Club of Rome conceived this project as a commando operation, to be followed by a larger deployment of activities. Its success in this sense is undeniable. After the first shock waves, a new kind of discourse is under way in practically every part of the world; new dimensions and dynamics, inconceivable, say, one year ago, are added to our thinking. The most hope-inspiring fact - and something indeed amazing - is the serious and profound debate on the modern world problématique which has now seized even personalities of the highest responsibility in politics, industry and science, for instance in your own country, the Netherlands, where, as you well know, the Club of Rome study played a considerable role in the November, 1972, elections.

You mention leading politicians and ruling circles. But at the base of all societies, we find workers. The youth federation of labor unions in the Netherlands organized a special congress to discuss Limits. They feel that while you and the Club of Rome seem to work from the top down, their task is to assist in changing the social infrastructure of society, without which they think the problématique you and your colleagues have brought to the attention of mankind will never be truly and effectively tackled.

Actually, we went over the heads of the world establishment - and

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academic circles as well - and talked straight to the people. The tremendous popular success of the book in many languages, the hundreds and thousands of conferences, articles and public meetings which give vitality to the debate it has set off in all continents in the space of a few months, and the participation in it everywhere of ordinary citizens of different conditions and convictions, show that this is not a case of a summit exercise; and that a movement of opinion, although still confused, is in the offing.

The Club of Rome has always maintained that a change of heart and mind coming from the grass roots of the people itself, and certainly not from countries of Western culture only, is needed if mankind and the different but interdependent societies which compose it are going to extricate themselves from the present predicament and follow a new, safer and saner course. This is tantamount to a cultural and societal metamorphosis which cannot be based on other than a widespread awareness that a change of direction has become indispensable to maintain reasonable control over our destiny and so as not to preempt our children and grandchildren from having a similar chance. Let me, however, say that labor leaders and youth leaders do not always act in a way that fosters this new consciousness among the people, who look to them for inspiration, if not guidance.

Actually then, the Club of Rome might have assisted in promoting a new kind of human solidarity?

This is one of our aims. The limited spheres of solidarity which still exist today as a legacy from the past - and which have the dimensions of a city, a nation, a race, a religion - are incongruous in the technological age that has just begun. I submit that the concept of the oneness of mankind, which was initially embraced only by certain liberal spirits, thanks to the work of groups like ours is now dawning upon young and old men and women of diverse culture, language and tradition, who feel that for good or evil they are united by organic bonds with the entire texture of life on this small earth - including people of different culture, language, and tradition. All of them are beginning to grasp that ‘one world or no world’ - the World Federalists' motto - has a ring of truth about it and is not mere rhetoric.

You have mentioned that the human condition has changed. What do you mean?

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Yes, man's condition is fundamentally changed in his world. He is now called upon to fulfill a new cybernetic role in it. On the one hand, he has reached such a dominant position in the ecosystem that he is compelled to take upon himself regulative and normative functions heretofore left to the inscrutable designs of nature and providence. This requires exceptional new qualities of ‘ecological wisdom,’ both words being used in the broadest sense. On the other hand, man has created such an integrated and intricate human system that its regulation and functioning can no longer be trusted to automatic mechanisms. Man himself must manage the system, developing hitherto unimaginable qualities of ‘sociopolitical wisdom.’ ‘His role, whether he wants it or not,’ as Sir Julian Huxley² has said, ‘is to be the leader of the evolutionary process on earth, and his job is to guide and direct it in the general direction of improvement.’ Man has to realize his responsibility as the true ‘cybernete,’ the pilot and helmsman, governor of ‘Spaceship Earth’ - which is at present drifting along dangerously. This is the true challenge to our generation. The longer we hesitate in recognizing it, the more reduced the options become for us and the next generations.

With respect to our environment, we must prepare for self-restraint and self-discipline, and direct our knowledge and technology rather towards protecting nature, or what is left of it, and other forms of life, instead of overexploiting them. In the social, political, and economic order, we must see the collective good take precedence. Individual initiative and profit must become subordinate.

Here you seem to approach a socialist concept of society, and perhaps even Skinner's concept³ of reevaluating such worn-out concepts as ‘freedom and dignity.’

Whose ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity,’ by the way? What is the meaning of ‘freedom,’ ‘dignity,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘self-fulfillment,’ and many others, when applied to the hundreds of millions of illiterate, unemployed, hungry and bewildered ‘marginal’ men and women who are condemned - they and their offspring - to live, breed and die without hope in this golden age of man's supremacy? If a modicum of freedom, and of opportunity for education, self-fulfillment and decent standards of life is recognized as a birthright - as I think is imperative - to all human beings, not only the values and goals of society, but also its structure, have to be radically changed.

I am afraid, however, that before this change can be engineered, the

2 See conversation no. 25.

3 See conversation no. 7.

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situation will become still worse, if for no other reason than the overwhelming, unrestrainable increase of the world population. No measure we can now devise and not even our newly acquired ecological or sociopolitical wisdom, supposing we achieve it, can spread the gifts of freedom and self-realization throughout human society until the growth of population is under control. During the coming decades a great deal of mankind's effort will be absorbed by the tremendous task of organizing itself into a highly megalopolized mass society, in which the problems that already baffle and defeat us today will become many times more difficult, and snowball with the new ones that appear in the meantime. Therefore, if we do not change course very soon, the situation concerning quality of life and civil liberties, too, is bound to become worse before it can be made better.

Professor Djhermen Gvishiani⁴ feels that Jay W. Forrester⁵ has been doing ‘very interesting work.’ He told me: ‘Particularly I like to refer to Forrester's studies on using management-information systems for decision making and forecasting in all fields of enterprise activities.’ While the Soviets translated most of Forrester' s work, Gvishiani cautioned at the same time: ‘Unfortunately, we do not know much about results of introducing Forrester's ideas or his main concepts into practice. I would stress that when we deal with social systems, they are so complex and they need a multidisciplinary approach to explain more or less these complicated phenomena.’

I think that Dr. Gvishiani is right. I have great respect for his culture, knowledge and judgment. I would like, though, to see a much greater participation of Soviet scientists, thinkers and humanists in the growth debate under way. It is a debate of truly transnational and transideological character, which has spread like wildfire everywhere else in the world. This is the time for a philosophical and intellectual effort by the entire world community, and it is sad that the powerful contribution of many socialist countries is slow in coming.

If, as you have said, our forward thinking and planning has to go beyond just the sum of singular projections into the future in a number of vitally important fields, such as the humanities, education, economy, sciences or security, how to match our rationale to their dimensions?

In order to envision and analyze not individual issues but entire clusters

4 See also London Financial Times, December 29, 1972, for a concise summary of Professor Gvishiani's view that strengthening economic cooperation on an all-European basis can only enhance the chances of peaceful coexistence.

5 See conversation no. 34.

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of systems into which human activities and expectations are channeled, we must follow a systemic approach. We must study the interrelationships of these activities among themselves and with the natural environment and the maze of problems which derive from their multiple cross impacts. Since many key issues have become so large as to exceed national and regional boundaries, this approach must moreover be global. Our ‘spatial horizon’ cannot be narrower than the span of our problems, the consequences of our actions. Similarly, our ‘temporal horizon’ cannot be shorter than the cycles of the phenomena we must control, and our approach diachronic, embracing all moments during such time continuum. And, last but not least, it should be goal-oriented, normative, as they say. Long-term global goals, both feasible and acceptable, have to be set for mankind. This is the most difficult challenge confronting us, but also the most vital one at this critical moment in man's evolution.

Forrester told me: ‘Driving an automobile is about the most complex system that the human mind can thoroughly grasp.’ How hopeful are you that man, in his present dismal state of underdevelopment as far as the use of his brain is concerned, will fulfill one-tenth of the program you just outlined?

Fundamentally, I am an optimist. I have faith in man. If he understands a situation, a difficulty, he is ingenious and deft enough to find a solution or a way round. As a man of industry, I always say that if the terms of a problem are clear, even a mediocre manager can passably handle it. But if the terms of the problem are not understood, even the best of managers is bound to fail. Therefore, the first step is to let and lead people to see by themselves the complicated workings of the human system and its interactions with the ecosystem, so that they can progressively grasp at least the general directions in which our collective effort should be guided. The Club of Rome project run at MIT has done a lot in this sense.

But scientists and humanists alike doubt the usefulness of the computer as any extension of the human brain. As Margaret Mead⁶ questioned whether machines can simulate human intelligence and to what extent: ‘I understand,’ she told me, ‘that if one gives a computer the general rules by which Beethoven constructed a sonata, it can produce a piece of music that anybody would say was Beethoven, but it cannot finish

6 See conversation no. 4.

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the sonata. The one thing the computer lacks is the creative process that results in a whole.’

Right. Margaret Mead's computer as Forrester's automobile are just tools. And so are a TV set, a laser beam and a printing press. Man can use or misuse them; they can expand enormously his opportunities, or he can become so intoxicated by the relative power they give him as to lose control over it and apply it against other men and finally himself. This is what is occurring today. As specifically regards computers, of course they have no intelligence. If you want, they are dumb machines, but loyal ones; and they faithfully reflect the intelligence or stupidity of the people who have communion with them, instruct them and put them to task.

In your book you reflected upon the future by remarking among other things: ‘The crucial question will be whether and how the advanced nations of the technological age are willing and capable of organizing the world for the new kind of mass, tense society which is looming up for the '70s and '80s.’ We are at present racing toward the mid-seventies. How are we doing?

Badly. It is true that momentous things have happened in this beginning of the decade of the '70s that have raised our hopes. Not only has the European Community made a decisive step to become pan-European, and now tries to speak with a single voice; and the long-expected Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) has finally met, grouping around one table no fewer than thirty-four nations; but in this period the two Germanies have come mutually to terms, as have the two Koreas; ceasefire at long last is within sight and the dawn of a new life can be heralded as imminent in Vietnam and the other Indochinese countries; operative links have been established with China, and the United Nations has started laboriously to absorb her into her fold; some partial agreement on nuclear-armament control has been achieved by the United States and the Soviet Union; and discussion on mutual and balanced forces reduction (MBFR) in Europe have been started.

But on the debit side of the ledger we have very grave entries to register. The powder keg of the Middle East is not yet defused, and so many people are led to despair in that area. And this is but a symptom of a deep-seated, filthy sickness. In 1971 global military spending reached

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a record of $216 billion, and there was a total of just over 23 million men under arms in the world. If civilians in military-related employment were included, the total would be around 60 million people. It is only slight comfort that this mad race to get ready for self-destruction will now probably slow down - when the world's nuclear stockpile is already fifteen tons of TNT equivalent for every human being. This is sheer madness. And everybody is busy anyhow increasing it, according to his best capacities: the ‘developed’ countries making operational new nonnuclear but equally devastating armaments; and the ‘developing’ countries bolstering their investments in conventional armaments - which between 1961 and 1971 increased by 114 percent. At the same time, the total expenditure on public education in the world is now only about 80 percent of military outlays. And yet half of the adult population is still illiterate. Disquieting signs come also from the agricultural front. While there are still between 300 and 500 million people suffering from hunger and malnutrition in our small world in 1971, the world's agricultural production is increased by a mere three percent over the previous year - and in the developing countries, where it is most needed, only between one and two percent. This is below the rate of their population increase, which is about 2.5 percent per year, and far from the strategic target set for the Second Development Decade, of four percent per year. Meanwhile, the overall gap between the rich and the poor of the world has continued to widen. A minority continues to expand its affluence, but for about two-thirds of humanity, the increase in per capita income has been less than $1 a year for the last twenty years. The current increase in per capita GNP in the United States equals in one year that expected under present conditions for India in about 100 years. Many other examples could be cited. Just one more: The long shadow of a world energy crisis is looming up very menacingly for the latter part of this decade and already some regions are in the grips of difficulties.

Let me note on another front the notable deterioration in relations among the developed nations of liberal economy - the United States, the European Community and Japan. They have continually put aside difficult problems, hoping to deal successfully with them in 1973, or 1974, or 1975. The result is that they now have to face a formidable agenda of complex, interrelated and well-nigh impossible questions. They include nothing less than the reorganization of the international monetary system, the role of the dollar and special drawing rights and perhaps of gold, essential questions of multinational trade, trade blocks, incentives, preferences, reciprocity, tariff and nontariff barriers for both indus-

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trial and agricultural products, questions of government procurement and discrimination against foreign bidders, balance of payments, international investments, capital movements, fiscal policies, burden sharing of defense costs, harmonization of antipollution standards and regulations, and the operation and future of the multinational enterprise - plus many other collateral issues, and of course the question of the overall aid needed by the less-developed nations. Unfortunately, there is no indication yet that the negotiating parties recognize the extraordinary importance and urgency attaching to the need to lay the foundations, establish the rules and create the instruments of the world community's economic life for many years to come. They seem to consider the 1973-74 negotiations as a mammoth technical exercise, which can be approached from postures of domestic relevance or expediency. They fail to grasp that the problems cramming their agenda are eminently political in a broad international sense and that as an ensemble they constitute a touchstone against which the capacity of industrial civilization to put its house in order will be measured. The lack of vision and leadership of the most powerful nations of our time is simply appalling. This is the state of the world at the time we are speaking. You, I, or anybody else can draw the consequences.

The picture you draw is impressive. Are all these problems interlinked? What may be the consequences?

The total situation, considered in depth, is alarming. Man is no longer confronted by self-contained problems, but by a tangle of highly dynamic, intermeshing problems, each of them of unprecedented complexity and dimensions. The Club of Rome calls it ‘the modern problématique.’ And for the first time the challenges and threats are truly global. Man is so bewildered and overwhelmed that trying to get out of the tangle, he is heading instead in the wrong direction. He hopes to win the day by increasing his ranks, or to find an escape through economic growth, and puts his faith essentially in the miracles of his technology. It is these fatal mistakes that have already set human history on a disaster course. Following this course, a succession of crises, ever more serious, is bound to occur piling up one upon the other. Their dominant traits may appear to be now ecological, now political, or economic, or military, or social, or psychological, but their profound and complex nature shows that in reality this is the crisis of a civilization. Unlike similar cases in the past, the crisis we are witnessing affects the entire

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human system, whose growth in size and power has the degenerative character of gigantism. If remedial action is not taken, in time, this may become a crisis of human destiny.

Is there a way out of this incredible impasse you described?

I firmly believe that there is. As I mentioned, we must first understand the changed human condition. And then make a dispassionate diagnosis of our ills, however anguishing it may be. I believe we are on the track in this sense and, if we persevere, the response of this unique and strange creature which is man will be intelligent, and save him. A profound and thorough renewal of society from inside is needed, and I think it will occur; new values attuned to the new world reality will be indispensable, and I think that they will prevail. The process, though, will be painful, and probably violent. But I think that it is so fundamentally needed and that it will have so great a regenerative power as to align behind it a vast majority of people everywhere and inspire them to carry it out in a determined but most humane way.

I am aware of your years in China, and many years in Latin America, both on assignment for Fiat. I know of your deep and sincere concern about the developing nations. When one studies Robert McNamara's figures of what the rich nations actually are doing to help the poor ones, in relation to their own GNP, then do you truly believe our part of the world will in its own wisdom decide (freely) to share its wealth with our fellow men in that vast, poor world of Afro-Asia?

Let me make a premise. Technological society needs social justice and peace more than any society of the past. In an age of exalted human power and extreme alternatives, social justice and peace not only conserve their primary and lasting ethical value, but turn out to be a matter of great political consequence, ecological concern, and existential significance. Further increases of population, economy and technology will but accentuate this interdependence. Human society will be ever more in danger unless and until the present intolerable disparities between rich and poor, between educated and illiterate, between those who have all the chances life can afford and those who haven't any are eradicated, or at least fundamentally reduced.

Once this truth is understood, the problem will be seen in different terms. It will not be the case of sharing our wealth with other people

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(charity or generosity), but of using it in the best way to guarantee to us, and others, a more secure life (spirit of community, principle of insurance against risks).

Limits to Growth enormously stimulated public opinion, certainly in the Netherlands, and in many other nations. Did the report pressure politicians and decision makers to take these problems more seriously?

Certainly. You are going to write a second book on growth in the near future, I understand. When you write it, I will report to you concrete steps that are now in the planning stage.

What goes for the creation of a trait d'union between Club of Rome efforts and the lower strata of society, the labor unions, no doubt goes as well for close cooperation between rich and poor nations. Some felt, so far, that the Club of Rome has been too much a rich man's club up till now.

The rich, the powerful, the technologically advanced are more difficult to convince, they have more to lose, and must make the greatest effort. It is only logical that action should be beamed on them first, or principally. But the Club of Rome is a microcosmic cross section of society as it is, and its purpose is to muster forces from all its parts in order to stave off degenerative involutions and change it harmoniously in all its parts.

What about future plans?

The Club of Rome is promoting a series of ‘second generation’ studies in Europe, Japan, Latin America and the United States. Some of these will be disaggregations from the initial Forrester-Meadows world model. Others will go deeper into parts of the system, such as the population-food-agricultural interfaces or materials availability on a global scale. Others will evolve different methodologies of investigation on the overall world system.

‘No single man, no group of men, no commission of prominent statesmen, scientists and technicians, no conference of leaders of commerce and industry, can brake or direct the process of history in the atomic age,’ Martin Heidegger⁷ has said. How hopeful are you that your tire-

7 Discourse on Thinking, Harper & Row (New York, 1966), p. 52.

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less efforts and those of your collaborators and colleagues will bear fruit before it is too late for all of us?

I take issue with this fatalistic assessment. I think that the present crash-bound course can be changed - by us, I mean the active segments of the present generations upon which the main responsibility to engineer change before it is too late rests. I have already affirmed it. Let me affirm it again in my conclusion. Granted, all the studies and meditations which can be made, though indispensable, are not sufficient to get mankind out of the pit into which it is more and more tumbling. Granted as well, the higher level of understanding and vision that they permit a wide public to reach and the transnational debate they engender about the dimensions of the world problématique are developments of paramount importance, but not in themselves capable of altering the course of history. Something deeper and greater must occur, something having to do with our cultural foundations, our vision of ourselves and the world. Without the revolution of hearts and minds noted before, a revolution capable of changing our individual and collective judgment and behavior, and which has therefore to be rooted in a profound transformation of our entire value system, any other change will be purely mechanistic, and may even have the adverse effect of leading eventually to technocratic involution. I maintain, however, that the Copernican revolution is under way. It has just started and will pick up momentum. I give it at least a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding. In any time, values, or the ethos, are what is considered ‘good’ by the people according to their own judgment, and perhaps under the influence of their leaders, be they the healer, medicine man, astrologer, sage, prophet, king, priest, minister, scientist, statesman, or the political class generally. The ‘good,’ either spontaneously detected by the people or suggested to them, is always related to real or transcendent situations they think they understand and is invariably connected with the idea of individual or collective survival. Since the reference base which substantiated beliefs and values in the past has been wiped out, the process of putting together the pieces of a new reference base and correlating them with one another is not only indispensable - but, in my view, has already started.

I maintain that at the same time, we in this generation, waking up to face a new, harsh reality, discover that things that are fundamental have long been forgotten or sacrificed to material values. We begin to grasp that the sense of our humanity is indeed essential, but that it can be derived only by the existence of nonhuman forms of life and our rela-

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tions with them, while instead we are wantonly destroying them, species after species. We perceive that our sense of justice, too, is being lost right now that we can leisurely apply it with respect to our contemporaries at marginal costs only. We have the chilling feeling that the sense of danger which used to keep our forefathers always on the alert has been muffled by our arrogance and reliance on the machine, just when danger has become incommensurably greater. And we realize in dismay that even the sense of destiny has left us at the peak of our power: The future depends literally on us and we live instead on a spree of plunder and contamination which will leave a scorched earth to the yet unborn.

This is a rude awakening, but a healthy one. We must keep awake, and explore deeper around us and inside ourselves. We must feel the challenge of our time and understand the total nature of this challenge. We must know that the cost of our answer will be very dear, but that there is no way to cheat on its payment. We must above all realize that short of a profound ethical renewal and a new humanism, society will be in danger and our future bleak, whatever our power and capacity. However, these are not impossible things to do. We are beginning to prepare for them. The more we advance along this new road, the clearer we will, perhaps, perceive that man needs to be a much better man if he is going to live in the next century - a learning process I see under way and which shows that he is indeed a rational and spiritual creature worth saving.