Report of the Club of Rome 2018, Chapter 1.1.3: “An Empty World Against Full Peace”

I propose to deal with the report of the “world government” themselves, and at the same time help you translate the original source.



The Club of Rome has always recognized the philosophical roots of human history. Among the valuable scenarios of Kenneth Balding's meaning of the twentieth century , is the management of the "Spaceship" Earth. His book was called "one of the five classic prophecies that first made sustainability a social issue."

But then many thinkers saw that management was difficult in conditions of complete peace. This was the main message of the Club of Rome in its early years, recorded in the “Frontier of Growth”. People cannot become successful managers of the Earth spacecraft with developmental ideals, scientific models and value sets that were formed during an empty world, when the population was small, and the generosity of natural resources on this earth seemed endless, that is, at that time when European Enlightenment grew and America looked like a place where settlers and businessmen could endlessly find new space.




Today, in fact, since the mid-twentieth century, humanity lives in complete peace. The limits are palpable, palpable in almost everything that people do. And yet, 45 years after the “Frontier of Growth” became a public problem, the world still tracks the “standard mileage” of the 1972 Growth Model, presenting business as an ordinary development from an empty world. Recent studies do support the prognostic value of Growth. A new term illustrating the phenomenon of growth is the concept of the boundaries of the planet (see Section 1.3).



When the “Frontier of Growth” was published, many people, especially in the political field, feared that the idea was that humanity should abandon prosperity and an acceptable lifestyle. But that was never the idea of ​​the Club of Rome. Our main concern was the growing footprint of humanity and the fact that economic activity must take radically different forms.

Why is it so difficult to change old trends? Well, changing trends depends on changing thinking. This was the experience of the European Enlightenment. This bold process took about two centuries, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and served as a great liberation from authoritarian rules and narratives determined by the Crown and the Church. The enlightened transformation was successful because it defended human reasoning and rational change through the application of the scientific method.

The Enlightenment established the ideals of individual freedom, economic growth, and technological innovation, which had barely existed before in European society. The concepts of democracy and the separation of powers had a political influence on a much larger number of men (hardly women) or their elected representatives. And innovators, entrepreneurs and merchants were allowed to flourish and become a new “aristocracy”, this time legalized by their own labor, and not by royal families. The Enlightenment was perceived by most people in Europe as a highly desired development.

There were bad sides. European colonialism, with all its arrogance and cruelty, almost did not find criticism among the intelligentsia of the Enlightenment. The plight of the working classes and impoverished peasants, not to mention the colonized indigenous peoples throughout the world, was hardly noticed in bourgeois circles. There was no understanding of the equivalent value of women and men. A runaway growth was considered quite legitimate.

The story continues. The world population has grown from one billion in the eighteenth century to 7.6 billion today. At the same time, the consumption of energy, water, space and minerals per capita is growing. This dual development has catapulted us into a "complete world". Looking at the environmental and economic realities, the time has come to demand some kind of new Enlightenment that is suitable for the whole world. Growth can no longer be automatically linked to a better life, but in fact can be disastrous. This simple but fundamental difference between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries alters our assessment and evaluation of technologies, incentives and rules governing all values, habits, rules and institutions of society.

Therefore, Economic Theory must be updated to adapt to the conditions of the whole world. It is not enough to take into account environmental and social problems, translating them into the monetary expression of capital. It is also not enough to simply refer to various forms of pollution and degradation of ecosystems as “external factors”, since this is a matter of some minor disturbance. The transition of humanity into a full-fledged world should also change the attitudes, priorities and incentive systems of all civilizations on this small planet.

Fortunately, some (rare) historical evidence confirms that at mature stages of development, human happiness can improve and be maintained, while the consumption of energy, water or minerals remains stable or even decreases (see sections. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9). Economic growth and technological progress can be accompanied, if not accelerated, by an increase in sophistication and resource efficiency, perhaps “from the cradle to the cradle”. For example, from eighteenth-century candles to light-emitting diodes, the output of light to the input of energy grew about a hundred million times, 37 allowing much more convenience of illumination with much less energy consumption even in the full world.

However, at present, almost all trends in resource consumption, climate change, biodiversity loss and soil degradation reflect the inadequacy and wrong direction of public policies, business strategies and their underlying social values. At a more basic level, these prevailing trends also reflect the inadequacy of the education system. The cumulative implications of these trends force us to dramatically change the direction of progress and work hard to create a new Enlightenment. This new Enlightenment should revive the spirit of exploration and bold vision, as well as a kind of humanism, which is not a primitive anthropocentric way, but also makes it possible to show compassion for other living beings, while paying much more attention to the long-term future (see 2.10).

However, this come on! It will not be easy to digest. Politically, it is very uncomfortable. She demands and represents fresh and original thoughts and approaches. It should be seen as inviting readers and participants to the “forward” discussion and join the exciting journey of developing and testing new approaches to creating a sustainable and prosperous world.

To be continued...

For the translation, thanks to Jonas Stankevichus. If you are interested, I invite you to join the “flashmob” to translate a 220-page report. Write in a personal or email magisterludi2016@yandex.ru

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