The cost is half, the return is double. Reports to the Club of Rome In a few words, “factor four” means that resource productivity can and should quadruple. The wealth extracted from one unit of natural resources can quadruple

Rome club is an international public organization created by the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei (who became its first president) and OECD Director General for Science Alexander King on April 6-7, 1968, uniting representatives of the world political, financial, cultural and scientific elite. The organization has made a significant contribution to the study of the prospects for the development of the biosphere and the promotion of the idea of harmonizing relations between man and nature.

Forester's book "World Dynamics" (1971), it said that the further development of mankind on a physically limited planet Earth would lead to an ecological catastrophe in the 20s of the next century.

D.Medouz's project ( ru

) "The Limits to Growth" (1972) - First report to the Club of Rome, completed Forrester's research. But the method of "systems dynamics" proposed by Meadows was not suitable for working with the regional world model, so Meadows's model drew fierce criticism. Nevertheless, the Forrester-Meadows model was given the status of the first report of the Club of Rome.

In 1974 the second report of the Club was published. It was headed by members of the Club of Rome M. Mesarovich ( ru

) and E. Pestel. “Humanity at the Crossroads” proposed the concept of “organic growth”, according to which each region of the world must perform its own special function, like a cell of a living organism. The concept of "organic growth" was fully adopted by the Club of Rome and still remains one of the main ideas it advocated.

report J. Tinbergen“Reconsidering the International Order” Tinbergen presented in his report a project for restructuring the world economy.

work of the President of the Club A. Peccei "Human qualities" (1980). Peccei offers six, as he calls "starting" goals, which relate to the "outer limits" of the planet; The "inner limits" of the person himself; cultural heritage of peoples; the formation of the world community; environmental protection and reorganization of the production system.

A special place among the reports to the Club of Rome is held by Eduard Pestel's report "Beyond Growth" (1987), dedicated to the memory of Aurelio Peccei. It discusses topical problems of "organic growth" and the prospects for their solution in a global context, taking into account both the achievements of science and technology, including microelectronics, biotechnology, nuclear energy, and the international situation.

In 1991, for the first time, a report appeared on behalf of the Club of Rome itself, written by its president Alexander King (ru ) and Secretary General Bertrand Schneider - “The First Global Revolution”. Summing up the results of its twenty-five years of activity, the Council of the Club again and again refers to the recent changes in the world and gives a description of the current state of global problems in the context of the new situation in international relations that arose after the end of the long confrontation between East and West; a new economic situation emerging as a result of the creation of new blocs, the emergence of new geostrategic forces; new priorities in global issues such as population, environment, resources, energy, technology, finance, etc.

In 1997, another report of the Club of Rome “Factor Four. Costs - half, return - double ", which was prepared by Weizsacker E. (de ), Lovins E., Lovins L. The purpose of this work was to solve the questions posed in previous works of the Club of Rome and, above all, in the first report "The Limits to Growth". The main idea of this report aroused unprecedented interest throughout the world. Its essence lies in the fact that modern civilization has reached a level of development at which the growth of production in virtually all sectors of the economy can be carried out in a progressive economy without attracting additional resources and energy. Humanity "can live twice as rich, spending only half of the resources"

THEORY OF A BILLION

The golden billion consumes the lion's share of all the resources on the planet. If at least half of humanity begins to consume resources in the same volume, they will obviously not be enough.

Until the end of the last century, the main consumer of mineral raw materials remained the "golden billion" - approximately one sixth of humanity living in developed countries. The overconcentration of demand was especially characteristic of the resource elite - non-ferrous metals. Due to their high cost (lead is three times, and nickel is forty times more expensive than iron) and the predominant use in technically complex industries and innovative products, the consumption of basic non-ferrous metals in moderately developed countries is an order of magnitude, and in underdeveloped countries it is two to three orders of magnitude inferior to Western countries. ... In the 70s - 80s of the last century, highly developed countries consumed 90% of all aluminum, 85% of copper and 80% of nickel. .

The idea of limited resources first appeared in the works Thomas Malthus... He predicted a global crisis due to the fact that population growing in geometric progression, and resource industries - in arithmetic, and should be exhausted in the foreseeable future ( Malthusianism).

V XX century there was a multiple increase in productivity in agriculture(albeit due to the colossal increase in energy consumption), many new materials have been developed that reduce the need for raw materials, due to technical progress also reduced material consumption in those industries in which it was not possible to replace natural raw materials with synthesized ones. At the same time, there was a rapid growth explored stocks mineral... However, back in the middle of the 20th century, it was predicted peak oil.

According to S. Kara-Murza, behind the term "golden billion" stands a definite, integral geopolitical, economic and cultural concept: developed countries, while maintaining a high level of consumption for their population, will, by political, military and economic measures, keep the rest of the world in an industrially undeveloped state as a raw material appendage, a hazardous waste dumping zone and a source of cheap labor.

According to S. Kara-Murza, the Golden Billion, as a concept, presupposes manipulation of public consciousness, to save “ sustainable growth"In the countries of the golden billion - and disconnection of" raw materials appendages "from the possibility of independent development, independent penetration into the capitalist market, from the information, technological and financial capabilities of the" civilized world ".

Question number 13

Noosphere - the sphere of interaction societies and nature, within which reasonable human activity becomes a determining factor development(this sphere is also denoted by the terms "anthroposphere", " biosphere»).

Noosphere - presumably a new, highest stage of evolution biosphere, the formation of which is associated with the development societies, which has a profound effect on natural processes. According to V. I. Vernadsky, “In the biosphere there is a great geological, perhaps cosmic force, the planetary action of which is usually not taken into account in the concepts of outer space... This power is intelligence human, aspiring and organized will him as a social being ”.

In the noospheric teaching, a person appears to be rooted in nature, and the "artificial" is considered as an organic part and one of the factors (increasing in time) of the evolution of the "natural". Generalizing human history from the standpoint of a naturalist, Vernadsky concludes that humanity in the course of its development is turning into a new powerful geological force, transforming the face of the planet with its thought and labor. Accordingly, in order to preserve it, it will have to take responsibility for the development of the biosphere, which is turning into the noosphere, and this will require from it a certain social organization and a new, ecological and at the same time humanistic ethics.

The noosphere can be characterized as the unity of "nature" and "culture". Vernadsky himself spoke of it either as the reality of the future, or as the reality of our days, which is not surprising, since he thought in terms of the scales of geological time. “The biosphere has repeatedly passed into a new evolutionary state ...- notes V.I. Vernadsky. - We are experiencing this even now, over the past 10-20 thousand years, when a person, having developed a scientific thought in a social environment, creates a new geological force in the biosphere, which has never been before. The biosphere has passed, or rather, is passing into a new evolutionary state - into the noosphere - is being processed by the scientific thought of a social person "("Scientific thought as a planetary phenomenon"). Thus, the concept of "noosphere" appears in two aspects:

1.noosphere in the stage of formation, developing spontaneously since the appearance of man;

2.the developed noosphere, consciously formed by the joint efforts of people in the interests of the comprehensive development of all mankind and each individual person

The concept of "noosphere" has been proposed professor mathematics Sorbonne by Edouard Leroy(1870-1954), who interpreted it as a "thinking" shell formed by human consciousness.

The most complete embodiment of Leroy's theory was found in the development of Teilhard de Chardin, who shared not only the idea abiogenesis(revitalization of matter), but also the idea that the final point of the development of the noosphere will be merging with By god... The development of noospheric teaching is primarily associated with the name of Vernadsky.

If the concepts of "living matter" and "biosphere" are accepted by science, then the concept of "noosphere" is still controversial in scientific circles. Critics of the doctrine of the noosphere mainly point out that this doctrine is utopian and is not scientific, but religious and philosophical in nature. In particular, Doctor of Biological Sciences. FR Shtilmark from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences believes: "thoughts about the Noosphere as a Society of Reason ... are already deeply religious in their very essence and so far remain utopian."

The American historian of nature conservation D. Wiener calls the doctrine of the noosphere "a utopian and scientifically unsound idea."

Question number 14

During the twentieth century, the growth of the world's population increased so much that the demographic problem turned into one of the most acute and difficult global problems - along with food, energy, raw materials, environmental, etc. In the last third of the twentieth century, a unique situation developed: the world's population doubled.

Population growth in the world (in millions)
1800 952
1900 1 656
1950 2 557
1960 3,041
1970 3 708
1980 4 441
1990 5,274
2000 6 073
2007 6,605

Demographers predict that in 2050 the world's population will approach 9.4 billion people, including 8.2 billion in less developed regions and 1.2 billion in developed regions. This means that in half a century, the world's population will increase by one and a half times.
Population growth depends on many factors: natural,
economic, social, cultural, religious, etc. This is a multifactorial process that is difficult to show in one article. Demographers believe that population growth goes through four to five historical stages. In the first stage - before industrialization and the industrial revolution - there was a high birth rate and death rate. In the second stage - after industrialization - the birth rate decreases as a result of advances in technology, education and health care. At the third stage (in the second half of the twentieth century), the birth rate decreases as a result of the use of contraceptives, urbanization, income growth and education. During this period, most women begin to be attracted more by interesting work and careers than having children. The fourth stage (post-industrial society) is characterized by low growth in birth and death rates. Finally, at the fifth stage, the low birth rate does not exceed the mortality loss and the population does not increase (as in Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, etc.). This is typical for society at the modern stage of information technology.
The main factor in the growth of population at the end of the twentieth century was the so-called "population explosion" in the less developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. From 1970 to 2007, the population in these regions almost doubled. At the end of the 70s, 75% of the world's population lived there, and in 2000 already 80%. (while up to half of the population are children under 15).

China has shown a good example in the conduct of demographic policy, where population growth has not exceeded 0.6% per year in recent years, and its population in 2005 was 1.3 billion people. Birth control in India has resulted in a stable growth rate of 1.6% per year, and the population is approaching 1.1 billion. The populations of China and India exceed half the population of all Asian countries, where two-thirds of the world's population live. As a result of this policy, China and India in the last years of the twentieth century, for the first time in modern history, managed to feed their population at the expense of their own agriculture (as a result of technological progress and an increase in land yields).
Countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America still have vast zones of chronic poverty, malnutrition and hunger. Moreover, the statistics of developing countries in this regard are inaccurate, so one can doubt that there are about 100 million hungry people there. Most likely, this is the number of those who need urgent help, but an ambulance cannot solve the problem of age-old backwardness, archaic social relations, pre-capitalist and even tribal traditions in the countryside. The number of the hungry is probably three times higher, given the prevalence of poverty, overpopulation, chronic unemployment, etc.

In Western Europe, population growth has been on average over the past 15–20 years: 0.1% - in Spain, 0.3% - in Great Britain, 0.4% - in France, etc. Europe's population growth rates remain close to those of the leading EEC countries. The rate of population growth has stabilized there long ago, and this does not raise questions. But a new phenomenon has appeared: zero population growth, when the birth rate barely covers the natural decline in the population. So, in the current decade, the population of Germany (82 million), Italy (58 million) and Poland (38.5 million) remains unchanged. Japan also has zero population growth and a population of about 127 million.
Against this background, the negative rates of population growth in 2000-2007 are striking. in Russia (-0.5%), Ukraine, as well as in a number of other former republics of the USSR: Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. This is, apparently, a direct result of the difficult and difficult living conditions after perestroika, privatization and the severing of economic ties. Emigration from these countries also affected. Governments are taking steps to boost fertility, but little has been done so far. Similar processes are observed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, etc., where also negative indicators of population growth for 2000-2007. It is hoped that the success of the market economy will lead to overcoming negative demographic trends in these countries.

Question number 15

Proceeding from the fact that the “natural” greenhouse effect is an established, balanced process, it is quite logical to assume that an increase in the concentration of “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere should lead to an increase in the greenhouse effect, which in turn will lead to global warming. The amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing for over a century due to the widespread use of various types of fossil fuels (coal and oil) as a source of energy. In addition, other greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and a variety of chlorine-containing substances are released into the atmosphere as a result of human activities. Despite the fact that they are produced in smaller quantities, some of these gases are much more dangerous in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide.

Today, few scientists dealing with this problem dispute the fact that human activity leads to an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Commission on Climate Change, “an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases will lead to a warming up of the lower atmosphere and the surface of the earth ... changes in the temperature of the atmosphere and the world's oceans and disrupt the stable types of circulation and weather. "

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the average annual global temperature was higher than usual for several years in a row. This has raised concerns that human-induced global warming has already begun. There is a consensus among scientists that the average annual global temperature has risen by 0.3 - 0.6 degrees Celsius over the past hundred years. However, there is no agreement among them as to what exactly caused this phenomenon. It is difficult to say with certainty whether global warming is occurring or not, as the observed temperature rise is still within natural temperature fluctuations.

Uncertainty about global warming is fueling skepticism about the imminent danger. The problem is that when the hypothesis of anthropogenic factors of global warming is confirmed, it will be too late to do anything.

Introduction. The need for forecasting world development has become especially urgent in the last third of the twentieth century. In the 70s, global problems (energy, raw materials, food, environmental and a number of others) became aggravated, affecting the interests of all countries and peoples. It is clear that all states are interested in their solution, regardless of ethnic, cultural characteristics and social system. In the modern world, burdened with all the "charms" of technocratic priorities, it is long overdue to establish and develop international, economic and other forms of cooperation to solve common problems.

And there are many of them: the discovery and use of new sources of energy and raw materials, the provision of food to the growing population of the planet, environmental pollution and the search for environmentally friendly technologies, etc. The Club of Rome is an association for the study of world development and its design with an eye to the coming 21st century. Representatives of both scientific and technical intelligentsia and scientists of other non-technical specialties (philosophers, ecologists, demographers, etc.) took part in the development of the projects. Membership in the Club of Rome is limited (100 people). Only those people who do not hold official government posts and do not represent the interests of any countries can become members of the RK.

Our compatriots also took part in the work of the Club of Rome. At various times the full members of the club were academicians D. M. Gvishiani, E. K. Fedorov, E. M. Primakov, A. A. Logunov, Ch. Aitmatov, honorary members - M. S. Gorbachev and B. E. Paton ...

The Club of Rome continues to study the current state of the world, in which fundamental changes have taken place, especially in geopolitics.

"Club of Rome": history of creation, goals and objectives

The Club of Rome is an international public organization that brought together about seventy entrepreneurs, managers, politicians, high-ranking officials, trusted experts, cultural figures, scientists from Western Europe, North and South America, and Japan. The Club began its activity in 1968 with a meeting at the Accademia Dei Lincei in Rome - hence the name of the club. The President of the Club was the vice-president of Olivetti, a member of the administrative board of Fiat, Aurelio Peccei.

The Club has no staff and no formal budget. Its activities were coordinated by an executive committee of 8 people. Initially, the Italian company Fiat and the West German concern Volkswagenwerk, financing the Club's activities, were interested in a systematic analysis of the prospects for energy and raw materials problems, which are associated with the possibility of expanding the sales markets for cars. But scientists - cybernetics, economists, sociologists, etc., involved in the development of these forecasts, covered a wider range of issues related to global problems in their reports.

These are the main goals that Club of Rome members have set for themselves:

to give society a methodology with which it would be possible to scientifically analyze the "difficulties of mankind" associated with the physical limitations of the Earth's resources, the rapid growth of production and consumption - these "fundamental limits of growth."
to convey to humanity the concern of the Club representatives regarding the critical situation that has developed in the world in a number of aspects;
To "prompt" the society what measures it should take in order to "do business wisely" and achieve "global equilibrium".

At the beginning of the 70s, at the suggestion of the Club, J. Forrester (USA) applied the methodology of computer modeling developed by him to world problems. ”The results of the study were published in the book“ World Dynamics ”(1971). Her conclusion: the further development of mankind on a physically limited planet Earth will lead to an ecological disaster in the 20s of the twentieth century.

After discussing Forrester's model, the executive committee commissioned Forrester's students to continue their research. The model has been significantly improved. According to the specified data, the beginning of the ecological and economic collapse was postponed by 40 years. This work, carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) under the direction of D. Meadows, was reflected in the book "The Limits to Growth" (1972). The Forrester-Meadows model was given the status of the first report of the Club of Rome.

The Forrester-Meadows model was most systematically criticized by a research group at the University of Sussex (England). As the head of the group H. Freeman noted in the article "Malthus with a Computer", "the study of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology borders on the fetishization of computers." It was in this that the British scientists saw the unfoundedness and danger of such recommendations.

In solidarity with the British, the American scientist R. MacDonald emphasizes that the models of human development issued by computers give only the appearance of accurate knowledge and false reliability of simulation results, that computers lead to the substitution of mathematics for knowledge, and computation for understanding. It is impossible not to note the validity of these remarks, taking into account the impossibility of artificial intelligence to take into account the spontaneity inherent in the development of both biological and social systems. Nevertheless, the relevance of these works, the very formulation of the problem and the search for ways to solve it were evident.

As A. Peccei said in one of his interviews, the work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed the paramount importance of the measures necessary, from the point of view of the Club of Rome, to prevent a catastrophe threatening humanity: it was a statement of the “material boundaries of the world”. And further research should have a practical focus and answer the question of how to live and coexist within these boundaries.

In 1974, work was completed on the second report of the Club (the project "Survival Strategy"), published in English under the title "Humanity at a turning point" and in French - "Strategy for tomorrow". The work on this report was headed by members of the Club of Rome M. Mesarovich (USA) and E. Pestel (Germany). A large group of researchers worked on the creation of the Mesarovich-Pestel model for two years. Like the preparation of the first report, the project was funded by Volkswagen.

The Mesarovich-Pestel model was much more perfect. Continuity was expressed in the fact that the new project was based essentially on the same assumptions about the impossibility of further growth of humanity as a whole. The transition to smart business "was presented to the authors of the project as slowing growth in developed countries and increasing it in Third World countries. The task of the Club of Rome, as the preface to the French edition testifies, is limited only to" manage the crisis. "

Table 2. Reports to the Club of Rome.

ANALYTICAL MATERIALS DEVELOPED UNDER THE Auspices of the ROMAN CLUB
Year	Names	Developers
	Growth limits	D. Meadows et al.
	Humanity at a turning point	M. Mesarovich and E. Pestel
	Revision of the international order	J. Tinbergen
	Beyond a century of waste	D. Harbor et al.
	Goals for Humanity	E. Laszlo and others.
	Energy: countdown	T. Montbrial
	No limits to learning	J. Botkin, E. Elmanjra, M. Malitsa
	Third world: three quarters of the world	M. Guernier
	Wealth and Wealth Dialogue	O. Jiriani
	Routes leading to the future	B. Gavrilishin
	Imperatives of North-South Cooperation	J. Saint-Jour
	Microelectronics and Society	G. Friedrichs, A. Schaff
	The third world is able to feed itself	R. Lenoir
	The future of the oceans	E. Mann-Borghese
	Barefoot revolution	B. Schneider
	Beyond growth	E. Pestel
	The limits of desolation	O. Jarini, V. Ciel
	Africa that defeated hunger	A. Lemma, P. Malaska
	First global revolution	A. King, B. Schneider
	Ability to manage	E. Dror
	Scandal and shame: poverty and underdevelopment	B. Schneider
	Taking nature into account: towards a national income conducive to life	V. Van Dieren
	Factor four: doubling wealth, saving resources twice	E. Weizsacker, E. Lovins, L. Lovins
	The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Understanding in a Pluralistic Society	P. Berger
	How are we supposed to work	O. Jarini, P. Liedtke
	Managing the seas as a global resource	E. Mann-Borghese
	Online: a hypothetical society	J.-L. Cebrian
	Humanity wins	R. Mon
	The Information Society and the Demographic Revolution	S. Kapitsa
	Art makes you think	F. Fester
	The double spiral of learning and working	O. Jarini, M. Malitsa
	Growth Limits - 30 Years Later	D. Meadows et al.
	Limits of privatization	E. Weizsacker

Forrester Meadows Projects

The first report to the Club of Rome - "The Limits to Growth" (1972), compiled by a group of scientists led by the American cybernetics professor. D.L. Meadows and his wife, relied on the ideas of Meadows's teacher - Professor of Applied Informatics and Cybernetics J. Forrester (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). In his book World Dynamics (1971), Forrester predicted the inevitability of worldwide catastrophes, which, according to his calculations, would occur at the beginning of the 21st century. These disasters will be the result of environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, the consequences of the population explosion in developing countries.

Compared to such a future, the author of the project argued, the quality of life of the modern period is much higher and, perhaps, the end of the twentieth century will later be recognized as "golden". To prevent impending events, Forrester proposed a model of global equilibrium that he designed, according to which it is necessary to slow down the growth of the world's population and set its number by the end of the twentieth century at 4.5 billion people. His model clearly shows ideas drawn from “Experiments on Population” by T.R. Malthus, according to which “food products” grow in arithmetic progression, and “mouths” grow in geometric progression, which inevitably gives rise to a struggle for existence (a concept borrowed from Malthus, introduced in the 19th century by Charles Darwin into the doctrine of natural selection in nature) with all its consequences: hunger, wars, etc.

Even before the publication of "World Dynamics" and "Limits of Growth" in 1968, the work of a world-renowned scientist, population genetics N.V. Timofeev-Ressovsky entitled "Biosphere and Humanity". In it, the author anticipated not only environmental priorities in modern science, but - even in the pre-computer era - the primary role of software in research like the projects of Forrester and Meadows. And, even before Forrester, the author of the "global equilibrium" model, Timofeev-Resovsky already in 1968 considered and proposed options for optimizing the biosphere, related both in Malthus and Forrester and Meadows, with the biological productivity of the Earth and population growth. “The problem of equilibrium, which I mentioned, is a problem for mathematicians and cyberneticians, without their participation it cannot be solved” (NV Timofeev-Resovsky).

The Limits to Growth Meadows begins by examining exponential (ie, geometrically progressive) population growth. The author believes that humanity is growing exponentially. In 1970, the world population was 3.6 billion people, and with an increase of 2.1% per year, it should double in 33 years, which, in fact, happened. According to the American geologist B. Skinner, the world's population in 1982 was growing at a rate of 1.7% per year, which leads to a doubling in 41 years.

What conclusion follows from the predictions made in the Meadows project? Rapid population growth will lead to a shortage of resources (both food and raw materials). At the current rate of industrial growth, non-renewable natural resources will be depleted in 50-100 years. The analysis of reserves of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, oil, coal, the terms of depletion of these reserves is given, and the corresponding conclusions are drawn. In general, these data are confirmed by B. Skiner "Will humanity have enough earthly resources?", 1969-1989). In short, the world's resource model is a “shrinking pie” model, substantiated, by the way, even before Meadows - by Walter R. Heibbard: as the pace of their exploitation and use is obviously not. " ("Mineral Resources: Challenge or Threat?", 1968).

The most famous of those published by the Club of Rome, the authors of this report have developed several models based on the extrapolation of observed trends in population growth and depletion of known natural resources.

According to the standard model, if no qualitative changes occur, it was predicted that at the beginning of the 21st century. first, a sharp decline in per capita industrial production will begin, and then - in the world's population. Even if the amount of resources doubles, the global crisis will only be pushed back to about the middle of the 21st century. The only way out of the catastrophic situation was seen as a transition to the planned development on a global scale according to the model of global equilibrium (in fact - "zero growth"), that is, the conscious conservation of industrial production and population

Diagrams 1-4 show models of the development of human civilization in the 21st century under various scenarios of the state and use of resources.

Rice. 1. “LIMITS OF GROWTH”: STANDARD MODEL Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. Costs - half, returns - double... M., Academia, 2000.S. 341

Fig. 2. MODEL OF "GROWTH LIMITS": A MODEL WITH DOUBLE RESOURCES Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. The cost is half, the return is double. M., Academia, 2000.S. 342.

Rice. 3. “LIMITS OF GROWTH”: A MODEL OF GLOBAL EQUILIBRIUM Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. The cost is half, the return is double. M., Academia, 2000.S. 343.

Rice. 4. MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD ECONOMY WITH AN ANNUAL INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY OF RESOURCES BY 4%. Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. The cost is half, the return is double. M., Academia, 2000.S. 350.

A group of UN experts, headed by the renowned economist V. Leontyev, critically approached the analysis and conclusions of the authors of The Limits to Growth. In the project "The Future of the World Economy" Leontyev emphasizes that "population growth is not an exponential process or an exponential explosion." He argues that in the developed regions of the world, the growth rate will decline in the remaining quarter of a century (XXth) and that a stable level of population will be achieved after 2025. Today we can confirm with examples these calculations (a decrease in growth in European countries, in Russia). In the countries of the Third World, stabilization will occur by 2075 as a result not of hunger, but demographic changes associated with a relatively high level of the economy.

One way or another, the project of the Meadows group can be considered as the first attempt to build a computer model of the system: "man - society - nature." The systems approach, as a new category, as a new method, was identified and applied.

What was lacking in the first models of the Club of Rome (namely, taking into account accidents, unexpected turns and surges of the entire global system associated with the choice of development paths) was compensated for in the 80s with the emergence of synergetics associated with the name of the Belgian physicist I. Prigogine ...

"Humanity at a turning point" (project by M. Mesarovich and E. Pestel)

The second report to the Club of Rome was written in 1974 by a team of authors under the leadership of the American cybernetics professor. M. Mesarovich and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Mechanics in Germany E. Pestel. Unlike the "Limits to Growth", the Mesarovich-Pestel project did not predict a global catastrophe caused by the above reasons. They considered events of a catastrophic nature, rather close in time, inevitable, but in separate regions of the world system.

In the past, the authors argue, the global community was simply a collection of independent parts. “Under the new conditions, the world community began to turn into a world system, that is, into a collection of functionally interconnected parts ... In each such system, the growth of one any part depends on the growth or lack of growth of other parts. Hence - the unwanted growth of one part threatens not only this part, but also other parts. "

Thus, the authors of the project proposed the idea of “organic differentiated growth”. The model of the world world economy according to Mesarovich and Pestel consists of 10 geographic regions. North America, Western Europe, Japan, other developed capitalist countries, socialist and developing countries stand out. In addition, the entire system includes various levels of hierarchy. Each level, consisting of one or another state (or block), is subordinate to other levels. Highlighted environments or spheres of human habitation (climatic conditions, waters, land, ecological processes); techno-sphere (chemical and physical processes); demographic, economic, public spheres; individual (psychological and biological world of a person). The inclusion of these spheres at different levels in the hierarchical system should allow, according to the authors, to predict their state.

But arguments about the interdependence of regions and the undesirability of the growth of some of them rather openly express the interests of, first of all, those countries that occupy the highest levels in the hierarchy of the Mesarovich-Pestel model. In fact, a number of countries and regions were meant to impose a policy of economic stagnation or technological modernization with a prerequisite for the liberalization of the political system. In addition, the technological dependence (and it is inevitable) of some countries on others is an asymmetric form of relations that reinforce subordination. The modernization of the economy, also implied as the introduction of liberal priorities into the social and political life of the countries of the lower and middle levels, leads, in turn, to the unification of all socio-cultural elements of these countries.

G. Kahn and "The Coming 200 Years"

The Hudson Institute, led by the famous futurist G. Kahn, developed a long-term forecast: "The Coming 200. A Scenario for America and for the World" (1976), the date of which was associated with the celebration of the bicentennial of the United States.

In contrast to the defenders of "zero growth", representatives of the Hudson Institute, on the contrary, believed that human society will develop quite intensively: "our planet has enough space and resources to live on it from 15 to 30 billion people." For a comfortable life for such a number of people, it is necessary to develop science and improve technology. All this is possible in the so-called "post-industrial society" (a concept that is quite widespread today).

The spheres of Kahn's postindustrial society, allocated by him, are as follows: primary - agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining; secondary - manufacturing industry, construction; tertiary - services, transport, finance, administration (management), education. The quaternary sphere, predicted by Kahn, involves rituals, aesthetics, the creation of new traditions, customs, the development of the arts (for the sake of art), tourism, games, an idle lifestyle. That is, a kind of culturological paradise, utopianism.

This work essentially embodies all the main directions of futurological search. Kahn does not hide the fact that as a theoretical paradigm he took the idea of a post-industrial society in the form in which it was written by D. Bell. In addition, the content of another work written by Kahn in co-authorship with A. Wiener - "Year Two Thousand" was actually retelling here.

The choice of the date - the starting point of the forecast - the proclamation of US independence is not accidental either. Thus, it is made clear that modern human history began when the American colonies challenged British rule. The beginning of the industrial revolution is associated with the same event, which transformed the face of the world accordingly and gave birth to a new type of person - the technocrat-consumer. Hence the conclusion that the four-hundred-year period (ie, two hundred years of the existence of the United States and two hundred years ahead) "will turn out to be as dramatic in the history of mankind as were the preceding ten thousand years."

Such a measure of reference clearly contains the claim that all further development of mankind will be considered only from the point of view of the American, only in the context of the “American” world. "New Jerusalem", proclaimed by D. Washington, should become a model and standard for the entire "old world". The persistence of the concept and the speed of its implementation are amazing: the convergence of two socio-economic systems (capitalist and socialist) has become a reality.

In general, Kahn's concept can be described as "extreme technological optimism." Unlike his predecessors, he proves the erroneousness of the calculations of mineral resources, justifies the solution of food and energy problems (in particular, in his opinion, in the 90s it will be possible to use a nuclear fusion system). Great hopes are pinned on the production of synthetic food based on the disposal of organic waste from various industries.

This concept, apparently, corresponds to the one developed by V.I. Vernadsky's concept of "noosphere".

V. Leontiev's project.

A group of UN experts led by the economist V. Leontiev built an economic and mathematical model of the future of the world economy and created eight conditional scenarios for the development of the world from 1990 to 2000. The project entitled "The Future of the World Economy" was published in the USA in 1976.

Taking into account the multivariate development of a nonlinear system (in this case, the world economic system) allows us to consider this project more perfect than the previous ones. In addition, the authors stipulate in advance that the growth rates were set as a hypothesis and cannot be considered as a forecast of future trends. In addition, a number of factors influencing world dynamics cannot be controlled, which is very important and anti-utopian in the sense of comparison with the project of the same G. Kahn.

One of the main components of the project is the development of the regions of the Third World. Leontyev's group has calculated that the gap between the levels of development of developing countries and countries - industrial centers of the world will remain at 1:12. Consideration and analysis of all options for leveling growth rates are rather cumbersome. We will only point out that the mathematical side of the Leontief model is unique: it consists of 2625 equations and reflects the details of the development of 15 regions of the world. The model itself is built on the basis of the input-output method, which is widely used to compile the input-output balance.

The main factors of the growth of the world economy, according to the Leontiev group, are:

food and agricultural production;
availability of reliable and potential mineral resources;
costs required to mitigate pollution of ecosystems;
foreign investment and industrialization of developing countries, changes in international trade and balance of payments;
transition to a new international economic order.

“The main limits of economic growth are the conditions for development - political, social and institutional, but not physical,” the authors of the project note, hoping for social changes that have not slowed down to occur over the past 20 years. In general, the conclusion of the project is of fundamental importance, since it is not limited only to quantitative analysis and calculation of reserves and resources.

The project also analyzes the reserves of resources, it is indicated, in particular, that the extraction of the remaining minerals will become more expensive.

E. Laszlo's projects about the goals of mankind

In 1977, under the leadership of the American sociologist E. Laszlo, another report was developed - “Global Goals and World Solidarity. A project for the Club of Rome about human qualities. " It affirms the primacy of the "human factor": the fundamental problems of the century "must be sought not outside of man, but in himself." This idea was borrowed from the President of the Club - A. Peccei. Laszlo believes that the development of the corresponding psychological qualities of people can lead to a radical restructuring of the material conditions for the existence of civilization. “This human revolution, called the revolution of world solidarity in the project, is more urgent than anything else ... it leads humanity to a viable future,” Laszlo said.

We are talking about a kind of solidarity, useful for creating a movement with the participation of religious and political movements for the development of certain new psychological qualities of a person. Apparently, from there - from Laszlo's project “the wind blows”, when every now and then new “humanistic” and “peace-loving” movements and organizations appear. In modern reality, these are: "Bahá'ís" - a synthetic all-religious concept, American Krishnaism, Dianetics, the "New Age" movement, etc. All the financial, organizational and ideological roots of these movements are in the United States, which is not surprising at all. E. Laszlo's next report was published under the title "The Goals of Humanity". The psychologism and subjectivity of Laszlo was expressed in the scenario of the leadership of science and religion. It is these two vectors of human activity, in his opinion, that will be able to lead the world on the true path.

Global dialectics and mondialism

All the models of global economic development considered in this article (as well as the following ones: A. Peccei "Human qualities", 1977; J. Botkin, M. Elmandtra, M. Malitz "There are no limits to learning", 1979; T. de Montbrial " Energy: Countdown ”, 1979, etc.) can and should be assessed in at least two planes.

1. A purely economic aspect. All project reports are relevant. This is undeniable. They were relevant in the 70s, and have become all the more relevant now, when we can observe their embodiment. Despite their pros and cons, all models, one way or another. are transformed into reality (or do they ask it?).

The economy, as "the ability to manage in one's own eco-house", in fact, has ceased to be such. It has become "world" and the area of its implementation (ecos) is the entire globe. Therefore, all, even isolated states (such as North Korea) cannot but take into account the processes taking place in the economies of other countries, especially highly developed countries. Naturally, the economic aspect is quite extensive, it includes the accounting of resources: mineral (raw), energy, labor (in the context of economic reality, a person has long been an appendage of the economy); taking into account demographic indicators, ethnic and socio-cultural characteristics, political doctrines.

2. "The supra-economic aspect". This conventional name allows you to look at world economic processes and their models in a broader way. It is unambiguous that the projects of the Club of Rome and similar models are set and solved in the context of the concept of mondialism. "Monde" from French - world, globality. Mondialism (or globalism) is a realizable super-politics, behind which are specific organizations and people. These are: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund and many others. In the reports presented to the Club of Rome, to one degree or another, the motives of the goals, objectives and specific programs of the apologists of mondialism sound: J. Attali, S.P. Huntington, geopoliticians R. Challen and H. Mackinder. It is indisputable that mondialism contradicts and is directed against "traditional" ethnic and socio-cultural views. The aim of mondialism: the creation of a "homogeneous humanity" - without races, without nations, without religions, without "fragmented" economies, without ideologies (except for one - "mondial"), in the end - without "sex differences.

Summary. According to A. Peccei, “... only recently have we begun to realize human society and its environment as a single system, the uncontrolled growth of which is the reason for its instability. The currently achieved absolute level of this uncontrolled growth determines the high inertia of the dynamic system, thereby reducing its flexibility and ability to change and adapt. It became quite obvious that this system does not have any internal cybernetic mechanisms and there is no automatic self-regulation of macroprocesses. This cybernetic element of the evolution of our planet is man himself, who is able to actively influence the formation of his own future. However, he can actually accomplish this task only if he has control over the entire complex systemic dynamics of human society in the context of his environment ... ”.

ROMAN CLUB (Club of Rome)- an international non-governmental organization whose activities are aimed at stimulating the study of global problems. Founded in 1968 by the Italian manager and public figure A. Peccei.

Rice. 1. TYPOLOGY OF GLOBAL PROBLEMS OF MODERNITY

Global problems are complex in nature, closely intertwined with each other. With a certain degree of conventionality, two main blocks can be distinguished (Fig. 1):

1) problems associated with the contradiction between society and the environment (the system "society - nature");

2) social problems associated with contradictions within society (the system "person - society").

These problems were maturing asynchronously. English economist T. Malthus at the beginning of the 19th century. made a conclusion about the danger of excessive population growth. After 1945, the threat of the development of weapons of mass destruction became apparent. The rupture of the world at the forefront of the “rich North” and the backward “poor South” was recognized as a problem only in the last third of the 20th century. The problem of international organized crime became acute only at the end of the 20th century.

Nevertheless, it is correct to consider the mid-20th century as the birth of global problems. It was during this period that two processes unfold, which seem to be the main root causes of modern global problems. The first process is the globalization of socio-economic and political life, based on the formation of a relatively unified world economy. The second is the deployment of the scientific and technological revolution (STR), which has multiplied all human capabilities, including self-destruction. It is as these processes operate that the problems that previously remained local turn into global ones. For example, the danger of overpopulation affected all countries when waves of migrants from developing countries poured into developed countries, and the governments of these countries began to demand a "new international order" - gratuitous aid as payment for the "sins" of the colonial past.

The Club of Rome played a primary role in understanding global problems and finding ways to solve them.

Organization of the activities of the Club of Rome. The Club began its activity in 1968 with a meeting at the Accademia Dei Linchei in Rome, where the name of this non-profit organization comes from. Its headquarters are in Paris.

The Club of Rome has no staff and no formal budget. Its activities are coordinated by a 12-member executive committee. A. Peccei, A. King (1984–1991) and R. Diez-Hochleitner (since 1991) have successively occupied the post of the club president.

The work of the Club of Rome is supported by more than 30 national associations of the Club of Rome, which promote the club's concepts in their countries.

Russia in the early 2000s is represented in the Club by three people: M. Gorbachev is an honorary member of the club, D. Gvishiani and S. Kapitsa are full members. Previously, the members of the Club were E.K. Fedorov, E.M. Primakov and Ch.Aitmatov. In 1989, the Association for Assistance to the Club of Rome was created in the USSR, after the collapse of the USSR, it was reformed into the Russian Association for Assistance to the Club of Rome (President - D.V. Gvishiani).

The main "product" of the Club's activities are its reports on priority global problems and ways to solve them. By order of the Club of Rome, prominent scientists prepared more than 30 reports (Table). In addition, in 1991 the leaders of the Club prepared the first report on behalf of the Club of Rome itself - "The First Global Revolution".

Table. ANALYTICAL MATERIALS DEVELOPED UNDER THE Auspices of the ROMAN CLUB
Year	Names	Developers
1972	Growth limits	D. Medous and others.
1974	Humanity at a turning point	M. Mesarovich and E. Pestel
1975	Revision of the international order	J. Tinbergen
1976	Beyond a century of waste	D. Garbor et al.
1977	Goals for Humanity	E. Laszlo and others.
1978	Energy: countdown	T.Monbrial
1979	No limits to learning	J. Botkin, E. Elmanjra, M. Malitsa
1980	Third world: three quarters of the world	M. Guernier
1980	Wealth and Wealth Dialogue	O. Jiriani
1980	Routes leading to the future	B. Gavrilishin
1981	Imperatives of North-South Cooperation	J. Saint-Jour
1982	Microelectronics and Society	G. Friedrichs, A. Schaff
1984	The third world is able to feed itself	R. Lenoir
1986	The future of the oceans	E. Mann-Borghese
1988	Barefoot revolution	B. Schneider
1988	Beyond growth	E. Pestel
1989	The limits of desolation	O. Jarini, V. Ciel
1989	Africa that defeated hunger	A. Lemma, P. Malaska
1991	First global revolution	A. King, B. Schneider
1994	Ability to manage	E. Dror
1995	Scandal and shame: poverty and underdevelopment	B. Schneider
1995	Taking nature into account: towards a national income conducive to life	V. Van Diren
1997	Factor four: doubling wealth, saving resources twice	E. Weizsäcker, E. Lovins, L. Lovins
1997	The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Understanding in a Pluralistic Society	P. Berger
1998	How are we supposed to work	O. Jarini, P. Liedtke
1998	Managing the seas as a global resource	E. Mann-Borghese
1999	Online: a hypothetical society	J.-L. Cebrian
2000	Humanity wins	R. Mon
2001	The Information Society and the Demographic Revolution	S.Kapitsa
2002	Art makes you think	F. Fester
2003	The double spiral of learning and working	O. Jarini, M. Malitsa
2004	Growth Limits - 30 Years Later	D. Medous and others.
2005	Limits of privatization	E. Weizsacker

The methods of neoclassical economic theory, dominant in economic science, based on the principle of rational individualism, seem to the Club members ineffective for understanding these problems. In his research, computer modeling and institutional methodology are widely used, based on an interdisciplinary approach and primary attention to institutions - organizations and cultural values. which are related to each other by numerous interdependencies.

If initially the Club of Rome focused on the contradictions between society and nature, then it began to give priority to social problems.

The peak of the influence of the Club of Rome on world public opinion came in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the influence of his activities, globalistics was formed as an interdisciplinary social science discipline. In the 1990s and 2000s, the ideas of globalism entered the scientific culture, but the activity of the Club of Rome and public attention to it noticeably dropped. Having fulfilled its role of "initiator" in the study of global problems of our time, the Club of Rome has become one of the many international organizations coordinating the exchange of views between intellectuals on topical problems of our time.

Analysis by the Club of Rome of global problems in the "society - nature" system. The severity of the global problems associated with the contradictions between society and the environment is due to their connection with the safety of earthly civilization. The modern highly developed technological civilization has lost the ability to self-regenerate, which was possessed by more primitive ancient and medieval societies. If it collapses as a result of some kind of cataclysm, then it will be almost impossible to restore it. Even if humanity survives this, it will not be able to return to the Iron Age, since most of the reserves of basic minerals are already depleted to such an extent that their extraction will require complex technologies that require metal-intensive equipment. In the event of the death of the current "world of technology", the new civilization can only be agrarian, but it will never become industrial.

It was with the analysis of the relationship between society and the environment that the work of the Club of Rome began. The initial work at the suggestion of the Club was carried out by the American computer simulator J. Forrester. The results of his research, published in the book World Dynamics (1971), showed that the continuation of the previous rates of consumption of natural resources will lead to a worldwide ecological catastrophe in the 2020s.

The report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth (1972), created under the guidance of the American specialist in systems research D. Medows, continued and deepened the work of J. Forrester. This report has gained a reputation as a scientific bestseller, it has been translated into several dozen languages, and its very name has become a household name.

According to the standard model, if no qualitative changes occur, then at the beginning of the 21st century. first, a sharp decline in per capita industrial production will begin, and then - in the world's population (Fig. 2). Even if the amount of resources doubles, the global crisis will only be pushed back to about the middle of the 21st century. (Fig. 3). The only way out of the catastrophic situation was seen in the transition to the planned development on a global scale according to the model of global equilibrium (in fact, “zero growth”), that is, the deliberate conservation of industrial production and population size (Fig. 4).

Factor four is the right idea at the right time, which should become a symbol of progress, a result that the Club of Rome would welcome. Doubling wealth with a twofold decrease in resource consumption - this is the essence of the task set in "First Global Revolution"(King and Schneider, 1991), the very first report of the Club of Rome. If we fail to double our wealth, how can we possibly hope to solve the problems of poverty that Bertrand Schneider (1994) draws attention to in "Scandal and shame"? And how do we deal with the difficult manageability problem discussed by Yezechel Dror in his recent talk?

On the other hand, how can we ever return to ecological balance on Earth if we are not able to halve resource consumption? Cutting resource consumption in half truly means "Reckon with nature", what is the name of Wuther van Dieren's last report to the Club. Cutting resource consumption in half is closely related to the complex problem of sustainable development that dominated the World Environmental Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.But remember that this task was set 20 years earlier in a well-known report to the Club of Rome "Limits to Growth" Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Bill Behrens (Meadows et al., 1972).

Thus, a doubling of wealth and a doubling of resources indicate the scale world problems, which the Club of Rome considers to be the core of its activities. We are proud to be able to present "Factor four" as an encouraging new report to the Club, indicating some of the steps that need to be taken by humanity. "Factor four" can contribute to problem solving, raised by the Club in "First Global Revolution". We would like to acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of two pioneers in the field of energy efficiency - Amory and Hunter Lovinsov, who were involved in this work by our member Ernst von Weizsacker, who initiated the "Factor four" one more report to the Club. The authors managed to collect 50 impressive examples of the quadrupling of resource productivity and thereby demonstrate the wide possibilities of the ideas presented in the report "Factor Four".

Each report to the Club of Rome summarizes the results of in-depth research and discussion by Club members and other leading experts. In the case of Factor Four, the results were summed up at the international conference of the Club of Rome, organized with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in Bonn in March 1995. The conference gave all interested Club members the opportunity to provide information for the forthcoming report, the draft of which had been circulated in advance. The Executive Committee of the Club of Rome came to a decision in June 1995 to accept the revised manuscript as a report to the Club.

On behalf of the Club of Rome, I express my sincere hope that this new report will contribute to an international debate involving both politicians and experts.

Madrid, December 1996

Ricardo Diez HOHLEITNER,

President of the Club of Rome

The Club of Rome is an international non-governmental organization whose activities are aimed at stimulating the study of global problems. It was founded in 1968 by the Italian manager and public figure A. Peccei.

Essence and typology of global problems. The phenomena that are commonly called "global problems" emerged in the middle of the 20th century and were recognized by the scientific community 20 years later. Global problems are problems affecting (to one degree or another) all countries and peoples, the solution of which is possible only by the combined efforts of the entire world community. The very existence of earthly civilization, or at least its further development, is associated with the solution of these problems.

Rice. 1.

Global problems are complex in nature, closely intertwined with each other. With a certain degree of conventionality, two main blocks can be distinguished (Fig. 1):

1) problems associated with the contradiction between society and the environment (the system "society - nature");
2) social problems associated with contradictions within society (the "person - society" system).

These problems were ripening asynchronously. English economist T. Malthus at the beginning of the 19th century. made a conclusion about the danger of excessive population growth. After 1945, the threat of the development of weapons of mass destruction became apparent. The rupture of the world at the forefront of the “rich North” and the backward “poor South” was recognized as a problem only in the last third of the 20th century. The problem of international organized crime became acute only at the end of the 20th century.

Nevertheless, it is correct to consider the mid-20th century as the birth of global problems. It was during this period that two processes unfold, which seem to be the main root causes of modern global problems. The first process is the globalization of socio-economic and political life, based on the formation of a relatively unified world economy. The second is the deployment of the scientific and technological revolution (STR), which has multiplied many times all human capabilities, including self-destruction. It is as these processes operate that the problems that previously remained local turn into global ones. For example, the danger of overpopulation affected all countries when waves of migrants from developing countries poured into developed countries, and the governments of these countries began to demand a "new international order" - gratuitous aid as payment for the "sins" of the colonial past.

The Club of Rome played a primary role in understanding global problems and finding ways to solve them. Organization of the activities of the Club of Rome. The Club began its activity in 1968 with a meeting at the Accademia Dei Linchei in Rome, where the name of this non-profit organization comes from. Its headquarters are in Paris. The Club of Rome has no staff and no formal budget. Its activities are coordinated by an executive committee of 12 people. The post of the club president was successively occupied by A. Peccei, A. King (1984-1991) and R. Diez-Hochleitner (since 1991).

According to the rules, no more than 100 people from different countries of the world can be active members of the Club. Scientists and politicians from developed countries prevail among the members of the Club. In addition to active members, there are honorary and associate members. The work of the Club of Rome is supported by more than 30 national associations of the Club of Rome, which promote the club's concepts in their countries. In the early 2000s, Russia is represented in the Club by three people: M. Gorbachev is an honorary member of the club, and D. Gvishiani and S. Kapitsa are full members. Previously, the members of the Club were E.K. Fedorov, E.M. Primakov and Ch. Aitmatov. In 1989, the Association for Assistance to the Club of Rome was created in the USSR, after the collapse of the USSR, it was reformed into the Russian Association for Assistance to the Club of Rome (President - D.V. Gvishiani).

The main "product" of the Club's activities are its reports on priority global problems and ways to solve them. By order of the Club of Rome, more than 30 reports have been prepared by prominent scientists. In addition, in 1991 the leaders of the Club prepared the first report on behalf of the Club of Rome itself - "The First Global Revolution".

The methods of neoclassical economic theory, dominant in economics, based on the principle of rational individualism, seem to the Club members ineffective for understanding these problems. In his research, computer modeling and institutional methodology are widely used, based on an interdisciplinary approach and primary attention to institutions - organizations and cultural values which are related to each other by numerous interdependencies.

If initially the Club of Rome focused on the contradictions between society and nature, then it began to give priority to social problems. The peak of the influence of the Club of Rome on world public opinion came in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the influence of his activities, globalistics was formed as an interdisciplinary social science discipline. In the 1990s-2000s, the ideas of globalism entered the scientific culture, but the activity of the Club of Rome and public attention to it dropped noticeably. Having fulfilled its role of "initiator" in the study of global problems of our time, the Club of Rome has become one of the many international organizations coordinating the exchange of views between intellectuals on topical problems of our time.

Analysis by the Club of Rome of global problems in the "society - nature" system. The severity of the global problems associated with the contradictions between society and the environment is due to their connection with the safety of earthly civilization. The modern highly developed technological civilization has lost the ability to self-regenerate, which was possessed by more primitive ancient and medieval societies. If it collapses as a result of some cataclysm, then it will be almost impossible to restore it. Even if humanity survives this, it will not be able to return to the Iron Age, since most of the reserves of basic minerals have already been depleted to such an extent that their extraction will require complex technologies that require metal-intensive equipment. In the event of the death of the current "world of technology", the new civilization can only be agrarian, but it will never become industrial.

Created under the leadership of the American specialist in systems research D. Meadows, the report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth (1972), continued and deepened the work of J. Forrester. This report has gained a reputation as a scientific bestseller, it has been translated into several dozen languages, and its very name has become a household name.

Rice. 2. “Limits to Growth”: The Standard Model Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. The cost is half, the return is double. M., Academia, 2000.S. 341.

Rice. 3. The “limits to growth” model: the doubled resource model. Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. The cost is half, the return is double. M., Academia, 2000.S. 342.

Rice. 4. “The Limits to Growth”: A Global Equilibrium Model. Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. The cost is half, the return is double. M., Academia, 2000.S. 343.

The authors of the report to the Club of Rome, Humanity at a Turning Point, M. Mesarovich and E. Pestel (1974), deepened computer modeling of the development of the world economy by examining the development of the main regions of the planet. They concluded that if trends continue, a series of regional disasters will occur even earlier than Forrester and Meadows had anticipated. However, the "survival strategy", according to the authors of the new report, does not consist in achieving a "state of global equilibrium", as proposed in the Limits of Growth, but in the transition to "organic growth" - the systemic interdependent development of various parts of the world system, as a result of which it is possible to achieve balanced development of all mankind. This position was reflected in another report to the Club of Rome, Beyond Growth by E. Pestel (1988). It is important to note that both models - both "global equilibrium" and "organic growth" - assumed the rejection of spontaneous self-development in favor of conscious regulation.

The first reports of the Club of Rome caused a heated discussion, both among social scientists and among politicians. Economists pointed out that scientific and technological revolution accelerates not only the consumption of non-renewable resources and environmental pollution, but also the development of new resources, the introduction of resource-saving and environmentally friendly technologies.

Rice. 5. The model of the development of the world economy with an annual growth of resource productivity by 4%. Source: Weizsäcker E., Lovins E., Lovins L. Factor four. The cost is half, the return is double. M., Academia, 2000.S. 350.

Under the influence of criticism of the forecasts of a global ecological catastrophe, the developers of subsequent reports to the Club of Rome began to focus not on the description of impending threats, but on the analysis of ways to prevent them. The authors of the report Factor four: doubling wealth, doubling resource savings (1997) E. Weizsäcker, E. Lovins and L. Lovins, having analyzed the development of resource-saving technologies, came to the conclusion that instead of a global catastrophe after 2050, one can expect simultaneous stabilization of the population and industrial production while reducing the level of environmental pollution.

Global problems in the "individual - society" system. The emergence of social global problems is mainly associated with the contradictions between the developed countries of the "rich North" and the developing states of the "poor South". Developing countries used to be colonial and semi-colonial periphery, they remain and now more often than not on the periphery of the world economy. Backwardness in comparison with developed countries is the most common characteristic of these countries, and it is this phenomenon that has become the main social global problem after the end of the Cold War.

Since the 1940s, special global institutions of socio-economic regulation (IMF, IBRD, UN economic organizations) began to be created to help lagging countries. However, the development of global regulation stalled already in the 1970s, as evidenced by the fate of the third report to the Club of Rome, Revision of the International Order (1976), prepared by a group led by the Dutch economist J. Tinbergen.

This report contained a program of comprehensive measures to qualitatively strengthen supranational global regulation. The authors of the report proposed the creation of several new world economic organizations: a world bank, which would have the right to carry out international taxation and dispose of the collected funds; the Mineral Resources Agency, responsible for the global use of minerals; a global agency responsible for the development and diffusion of technologies, etc.

However, the proposals of J. Tinbergen's group did not receive support. The developing countries feared that their national sovereignty would be infringed upon, while the already developed forms of supranational regulation were sufficient.

Since the 1980s, under the influence of the "conservative counter-revolution", the attitude in developed countries to the idea of supranational regulation with social priorities has generally seriously deteriorated. It came to be seen as a dangerous form of international bureaucratic regulation. Therefore, later reports to the Club of Rome on social problems began to focus not on measures of centralized regulation, but on the self-sufficiency of developing countries and changing cultural stereotypes under the general slogan "think globally, act locally."

So the report to the Club of Rome, No Limits to Learning (1979), was devoted to the prospects for the development of mass education, which can significantly reduce the cultural gap between people of different social groups and countries of the world. The report Barefoot Revolution (1988) examined the results and prospects for the development of small informal entrepreneurship in the Third World, aimed at meeting the needs of local residents.

The general position of the Club of Rome on the prospects for solving global social problems is expressed in the title of A. Peccei's book Human qualities (1977). The founder of the Club of Rome believed that success is possible, first of all, by changing the qualities of a person, which can be achieved by fostering a "new humanism", including globality, love of justice and aversion to violence.

The reports to the Club of Rome, devoted to social global problems, could not play as significant a role in the development of globalism and in the practical solution of global problems as the reports on environmental problems. However, they made an important contribution to understanding the social "ills of humanity."

The problem of global development can be represented as a kind of system - a set of interrelated components of civilization and nature, which arose and develops as a result of the activities of individuals, social and cultural communities and all of humanity. One of the most important features of the global system is the multitude of actors with different needs, interests and goals. Contradictions naturally arise between various goals, between goals and results of activity, which give rise to problems characteristic of each major stage in the development of the system. Trying to understand a system of great complexity, consisting of a multitude of diverse in characteristics and, in turn, complex subsystems, scientific knowledge proceeds through differentiation, studying the subsystems themselves and ignoring their interaction with the large system in which they enter and which has a decisive effect on the entire the global system as a whole. But complex systems are not limited to the simple sum of their components; in order to understand integrity, its analysis must certainly be supplemented by a deep systemic synthesis, an interdisciplinary approach and interdisciplinary research are needed here, a completely new scientific toolbox is needed.

To comprehend the laws governing human activity, it was important to learn to understand how in each specific case the general context of perception of the next tasks develops, how to bring into the system (hence the name - “system analysis”) initially scattered and redundant information about the problem situation, how to reconcile with each other and to deduce one from the other the views and goals of different levels related to a single activity.

The systems approach has developed, solving a triune task: the accumulation in general scientific concepts and concepts of the latest results of social, natural and technical sciences, concerning the systemic organization of objects of reality and methods of their cognition; integration of the principles and experience of the development of philosophy, primarily the results of the development of the philosophical principle of consistency and related categories; the application of the conceptual apparatus and modeling tools developed on this basis for solving urgent complex problems.

In the spring of 1968. Aurelio Peccei, an Italian economist, public figure and businessman, a member of Fiat's management and vice-president of Olivetti, has sent an invitation to 30 prominent European scientists and representatives of the business world to participate in the discussion of pressing problems. On April 6-7 of the same year, in Rome, in the old National Academy dei Linchei, a meeting of the invitees took place, at which discussions on the most pressing problems of our time unfolded. Those participants of the meeting who supported the idea of creating an international organization united in the Club of Rome. The organization adopted the status of a non-governmental, not associated with political parties, classes, ideologies. The Club of Rome builds its work in the form of organizing meetings, symposia, seminars, meetings with famous scientists, political leaders, influential businessmen. These are the main goals that the Club of Rome figures have set themselves:

to give society a methodology with which it would be possible to scientifically analyze the "difficulties of mankind" associated with the physical limitations of the Earth's resources, the rapid growth of production and consumption - these "fundamental limits of growth";

to convey to humanity the concern of the Club representatives regarding the critical situation that has developed in the world in a number of aspects;

to "prompt" the society what measures it should take in order to "do business wisely" and achieve "global equilibrium".

On the initiative of the Club of Rome, a number of research projects have been carried out, the results of which are published in the form of reports. The most famous of them, which caused heated scientific discussions - "Limits to Growth", 1972. (supervisor D. Meadows), “Survival Strategy”, 1974. (hands. M. Mesarovich and E. Pestel), "Revision of the international order", 1976 (hands. J. Tinbergen), "Goals for humanity", 1977. (supervisor E. Laszlo), “There are no limits to learning”, 1979. (leaders J. Botkin, M. Elmanjra, M. Malitsa), “Routes leading to the future”, 1980. (B. Gavrilishin), “Microelectronics and Society”, 1982 (leaders G. Friedrichs, A. Schaff), “The Barefoot Revolution”, 1985. (B. Schneider) and others.

The purpose of these reports is to strive to achieve an understanding of the difficulties, called by the Club of Rome "global problems" that arise on the path of human development, to influence public opinion about these problems. From the day of its foundation until the day of his death (1984), Aurelio Peccei was the president of the Club of Rome. Belief in the uniqueness and significance of a person, in his intellectual and moral potential, helped Peccei to highlight the main thing in life. He believed that the world, in which enough knowledge and means had accumulated to ensure the well-being of mankind, should be governed by people with “human qualities” (Pecce's main work is called “Human qualities”). This means that each of us should think, first of all, about changing the person himself, i.e. yourself. We must realize the fact that to be called a modern person means to comprehend the art of becoming better.

For a long time, Aurelio Peccei had been looking for suitable associates with whom he could begin the implementation of this project. In 1967, he took a roundabout route to Alexander King. “It all started with the fact,” King said later, “that one of my colleagues, a scientist from the Soviet Union, leafing through a magazine while waiting for a plane at one of the airports, accidentally came across an article about Aurelio Peccei's speech at a conference of industrialists in Buenos Aires. Interested in what he read, he sent me this issue of the magazine with a short postscript: "This is worth considering." Then I first heard the name of Peccei, and it did not say anything to me. I inquired about him and immediately wrote, offering to meet. Immediately, about a week later, our first conversation took place. "

A good preliminary document was needed to fuel the imagination of colleagues. And here, as in many other endeavors, the question boiled down to where to find a talented person with free time, who would translate into convincing language the thoughts that seemed to us reasonable. This request was made to Erich Janch. Then Aurelio Peccei was not yet familiar with him, but, having learned better, he realized that Jantsch was endowed not only with a rare mind, but also with the ability to soberly and mercilessly anatomize the future that it involuntarily acquired the character of a stern warning. An astronomer by education, he sometimes looked at his fellows on the planet, as it were from sky-high heights. The document he prepared, entitled “An Attempt to Create the Principles of World Planning from the Position of General Systems Theory,” was well thought out and convincing, although not always easy to understand.

If we express the essence of the document created by Janche in just a few phrases, it boils down to the following: “At present, we are beginning to understand human society and its environment as a single system, the uncontrolled growth of which causes its instability. The currently achieved absolute level of this uncontrolled growth determines the high inertia of the dynamic system, thereby reducing its flexibility and ability to change and adapt. It became quite obvious that in this system there are no internal cybernetic mechanisms and no "automatic" self-regulation of macroprocesses is carried out. This cybernetic element of the evolution of our planet is man himself, who is able to actively influence the formation of his own future. However, he can actually accomplish this task only if he has control over the entire complex systemic dynamics of human society in the context of his environment ... which can herald the entry of humanity into a new phase of psychological evolution. "

Following this, Aurelio Peccei, having secured financial support from the Agnelli Foundation, chose, together with King, about thirty European scientists - natural scientists, sociologists, economists, planning specialists and wrote to them, inviting everyone to come to Rome on April 6-7, 1968 to discuss many questions. Hoping that this meeting would be a momentous event, I turned to the president of the academy founded in 1603 and therefore the oldest existing academy, the Accademia dei Lincei National, with a request to provide us with their premises, which would be a worthy meeting place.

Even during his trip to Washington at the end of 1966, Aurelio Peccei gave lectures on a topic he called the 1970s Requirements for the Modern World. " In these lectures, he touched upon problems that were not yet as obvious as now: global interdependence, the threat of an impending exacerbation of global macro-problems, as well as the inadmissibility of replacing such problems with immediate needs that are not correlated with a holistic and comprehensive picture of the changes taking place. They did this for two purposes. First, it is impossible to assess the prospects for world development or properly prepare for it without the joint, concentrated efforts of all mankind, including also the communist and developing countries, and that such efforts must be urgently undertaken. And secondly, it is necessary to widely apply systems analysis and other modern methods, in the development of which the United States has reached leading positions, using them to solve large-scale and complex aerospace and defense problems, and that these achievements should be applied to study equally large-scale and complex problems put forward by social and international life. During the preparation of the memorandum, in which it was strongly recommended to organize a joint international project to study ways of practical implementation of the ideas I expressed, Aurelio Peccei had the opportunity to discuss them in the State Department and the White House. This project was supposed to be as apolitical as possible and carried out through non-governmental organizations. Aurelio Peccei believed that the independence of this kind of enterprise could be achieved if it was organized, say, under the auspices of the Ford Foundation. Vice President Humphrey readily supported Peccei and wrote to McGeorge Bundy, former National Security Adviser to President Kennedy (who had recently been named President of the Ford Foundation). The further history of this undertaking only emphasizes the slowness of human reactions to the breathtaking swiftness of the development of world events.

Then it took seven years of effort and tireless work to finally give birth to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis - IIASA. It was founded in October 1972 and initially included the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada, Japan, the FRG and the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, France, Great Britain and Italy. Several countries strongly stated that the Institute should be located on their territory. It was necessary to create a special group that would deal with this issue, prepare a lot of meetings and conduct detailed and detailed surveys. And the final resolution of the issue was considerably delayed. Finally, the choice was made in favor of the Laxenburg castle near Vienna proposed by the Austrian government. The Institute undertook an in-depth, well-reasoned review and analysis of two major projects of the Club of Rome.

In September 1969, a meeting took place in the town of Alpbach. Here, in Alpbach, since 1945, the Austrian College held traditional summer meetings, where several hundred guests discussed their problems - mainly young people from Western European countries, although there were representatives from the East and Americans. That autumn, the main theme was: "The future - foresight, study, planning." It was decided to organize a special meeting related to this general theme and dedicated to discussing the joint responsibility of developed countries for solving the problems of the future of the whole world.

Having considered several very different possibilities, Erich Jantsch, Alexander King. Edward Pestel, Konrad Weddington (Scottish biologist), Paul Weiss (also a biologist, educator and popularizer of science), Detlev Bronk (Honorary President of the US Academy of Sciences, also deceased) and Hasan Ozbekhan eventually came to a rather unanimous opinion that the most promising path to achieve our goals lies through the presentation and analysis of world problems with the help of the systematic use of global models. Never before have mathematical models been used to describe human society with all its environment as a single integral system, the behavior of which can even be modeled and studied.

A specific project was proposed to us by Hasan Ozbekkhan, a Turk by origin, a cybernetic scientist, planner and philosopher, who at that time was the head of one of the California brain trusts. He was quite well aware of the goals that the Club of Rome had set for himself, but he had not previously taken part in its activities.

It was decided to conduct a series of studies under the general title of "the difficulties of mankind." But the project led by Ozbekkhan failed, although general principles of applying systems analysis to civilization were formulated.

For the first forecasts about the prospects for the development of science and technology, the “Delphi method” was used, the essence of which is to interview experts who identify and interpret the problem, giving appropriate recommendations. Hasan Ozbekkhan presented his modification of the Delphi method. However, after some reflection, the experts did not find this method suitable - in order to work, the model had to take into account, in addition to relatively easily quantifiable economic, also environmental, social and political aspects, and, in addition, correspond to the scale of global problems.

In July 1970, following a failed attempt by Ozbekhan, the Club of Rome began work that would later lead to the well-known report on The Limits to Growth.

The Club of Rome remained small in number - no more than 100 members - which should have facilitated at least minimal constant contact with each other - although this is not always easy to do even with such a number. It does not have to be an organization - there are already enough organizations of all kinds in the world, I do not have to replenish their number in order to be able to contact one of them if necessary. It should exist on its own, albeit meager, budget, so as not to depend to any extent on any funding sources. It should be truly transcultural - addressing all possible scientific disciplines, ideologies and value systems, without associating itself with any of them. It should not be political, in the sense that I will explain later. It should be truly informal and facilitate the most free exchange of views between its members. Finally, it must be prepared to disappear as soon as it is no longer needed: there is nothing worse than ideas or institutions that have outlived their own usefulness.

The club was conceived as an action-oriented society, not a discussion for the sake of discussion. In accordance with the planned program of actions, the Club was assigned two main goals, which it had to gradually implement. The first goal is to promote and help people to become aware of the difficulties of humanity as clearly and deeply as possible. Obviously, this goal includes the study of those limited and highly questionable prospects and choices that will remain for humanity if it does not urgently correct the emerging trends in world development. And the second goal is to use all available knowledge to stimulate the establishment of new relationships, policies and institutions that would help to correct the current situation.

To serve this dual purpose, the Club of Rome sought, in its composition, to represent, as it were, a cross-section of modern progressive humanity. Its members were prominent scientists and thinkers, statesmen, representatives of the education sector, teachers and managers from more than thirty countries of the world. All of them differed from each other in education and life experience, occupied different positions in society and adhered to different beliefs and views. Among them are biologists Karl-Göran Haden from Stockholm (Sweden), Aklil Lemma from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Marxist philosopher and sociologist Adam Schaff (Poland), Brazilian political scientist Helio Jagaribe, US Senator Claybourne Senator Pell and Maurice Lamontant, former President of the Swiss Confederation Nello Celio, Professor of Psychology at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, Adeoye Lambo, who served as Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Deputy Chairman of the Planning Committee of Poland Josef Pajestku, Japanese urbanist Kenzo Tange, naturalist scientist from Cairo Mohammed Kassas University, director of Australia's largest medical research institute, Gus Nossal, and John Platt at the Ann Arbor Institute of Mental Health in Michigan.

The Club of Rome, by its very nature, cannot serve the interests of any particular country, nation or political party, and does not identify itself with any ideology; the mixed composition does not allow him to fully join the position of one of the parties in the controversial international affairs tearing humanity apart. He does not and cannot have a single system of values, a single point of view, he does not at all strive for like-mindedness. The conclusions of the projects, which he organizes, reflect the thoughts and results of the work of entire groups of scientists and in no way can be regarded as the position of the Club. And nevertheless, the Club of Rome is by no means apolitical; moreover, it can just be called political in the truest, etymological meaning of the word. For by contributing to the study and understanding of the long-term interests of mankind, he actually helps to lay new, more solid and time-consonant foundations for making important political decisions and at the same time makes those on whom these decisions depend, to realize the full depth of their responsibility.

Professor Forrester (Forrester Jay is a professor of applied mathematics and cybernetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Author of studies of economic processes using mathematical models) joined the activities of the Club of Rome in June 1970. At that time, a one-year meeting was held in Bern, and the main topic of our discussions was Ozbekkhan's proposal, which, for all its tempting potential, caused us many doubts. Here Forrester said that he could, in a very short time, develop and put into operation a model that imitates world processes and is fully consistent with the wishes of the Club. At first, the club intended to raise too many issues, but then they realized that it was impossible to grab the attention of the public by speaking too much at once.

Forrester's persuasive, essentially engineering approach, as well as his previous work, gave us some assurance that the structure and logic of the model he conceived fit the purpose. This model assumed the application of the system dynamics method, which he had been developing for many years. In an incredibly short, four-week time frame, Forrester created a very primitive but sufficiently comprehensive mathematical model that could roughly simulate the development of the world situation using five main interdependent variables: population, investment, use of non-renewable resources, environmental pollution, and food production.

Forrester believed that a systems analysis of the dynamic tendencies of these variables - which are characterized by rapid and often exponential growth - and their interactions, would provide an opportunity to recreate and trace the behavior in different conditions of the entire system as a whole. To quantify the values of these five decisive factors, he used a lot of data from the book "Before the Abyss" and some articles by Aurelio Peccei devoted to global macro-problems. After choosing the acceptable levels of interaction, he investigated the cross-influence of these processes on each other. The analytical foundations for building a model designed to simulate world processes were considered in his previous works devoted to the study of industrial and urbanized systems, therefore, a truly qualitative leap was to move from such microsystems to a global macrosystem. He named this new technique world dynamics.

The decisive meeting took place in July 1970 and Cambridge, USA, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The work program was designed for ten days, and upon arriving in Cambridge, the members of the Club learned that the mathematical world model had already passed a number of trial tests on the machine. This model, which Forrester called "MIR-1", consisted of more than forty non-linear equations describing the interdependence of the selected variables; several test runs on the machine checked the consistency of the model and revealed some errors and inaccuracies. Then he reformulated the model, turning it into "MIR-2", and began to test. Thus was born the first generation of computer models designed to study long-term trends in world development.

Even the very first models - for all their primitiveness and sometimes imperfection - could quite convincingly and impressively imitate the dynamics of the real world. In the process of studying the five selected critical parameters and their interactions at higher levels, conclusions emerged about imminent catastrophe, requiring immediate action to halt the dangerous tendency of the human system to grow. Undoubtedly, Forrester intuitively foresaw these preliminary conclusions in advance, which somewhat shaken his confidence in their correctness, since the conclusions of the modeling are usually opposite to those expected, that is, "counter-intuitive." As for me, I have long been convinced that rapid processes that have swept wide areas cannot lead to anything other than uncontrollable and undesirable situations.

On the advice of Forrester, the Club of Rome invited Professor Dennis L. Meadows (Dennis Meadows - cyberneticist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specialist in systems dynamics, member of the Club of Rome.), Forrester's young assistant, then unknown to us, to lead the group, which was to to transform the model "MIR-2" into the later known "MIR-3". Without losing ties with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), this project a little later became funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, which before that finally rejected Ozbekhan's proposal. For the first time, Fund money crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the opposite direction - from Europe to the United States. Retaining the overall leadership of the project, Jay Forrester published World Dynamics a few months later, summarizing his contributions to the creation of the first machine models to analyze the global system.

Henceforth, the scientific and administrative leadership was brilliantly carried out by Dennis Meadows, who showed not only exceptional dedication, but also the ability to obtain concrete results. He grew up with the project, assisted by a multinational group of scientists, whose average age was no more than thirty years. On March 12, 1972 in Washington, DC, at the Smithsonian Institution, the book “The Limits to Growth. Report to the Club of Rome ”, containing the conclusions of the project. Despite the delay, the project was eventually completed in record time, as only 21 months had passed since our first meeting in Cambridge. Another characteristic feature of the project was its extremely modest budget, totaling only $ 250,000. It is hard to believe that the total cost of the operation ended up being less than one thousandth of a percent of the amount that the United States of America invests annually in research and development.

The Limits to Growth report was built on the basis of Forrester's Mir-3 models.

As for the content of Meadows's report, he, as I expected, confirmed and developed Forrester's preliminary findings. In a few words, this can be expressed as follows: while maintaining the current growth trends in a finite-scale planet, the next generations of mankind will reach the limits of demographic and economic expansion, which will lead the system as a whole to an uncontrollable crisis and collapse. It is still possible, the report notes, to avoid a catastrophe by taking measures to limit and regulate growth and reorient its goals. However, the further, the more painful these changes will be and the less chances of ultimate success will remain.

Here are the main findings of this report:

1. If current trends in population growth, industrialization, environmental pollution, food production and resource depletion continue, the world will come to its limits over the next century. The result is likely to result in an unexpected and uncontrollable decline in population and a sharp drop in production.
2. Growth trends can be reversed and sustained long-term economic and environmental stability. The state of global equilibrium can be established at a level that allows satisfying the basic material needs of each person and gives each person equal opportunities to realize their personal potential.

Of course, neither Me nor Meadows claimed to be prophets. And the report itself did not at all set itself the goal of predicting or prescribing anything. His task was rather educational and warning. In essence, it boiled down to identifying the catastrophic consequences of existing trends and stimulating political change that would help to avoid them. By warning people in time and giving them the opportunity to visually see how quickly they are rushing to the abyss, you can prepare humanity for the need for urgent changes. The draft did not specify the nature of these changes and did not set such goals. In it, only the most general view of the planet was given, comparable only to a photograph taken from a satellite, and under no circumstances did it allow any specific recommendations to be made. The indicators of population growth and industrial production on the planet, as well as the average level of pollution, food consumption and depletion of natural resources were well suited to demonstrate the general state of the human system, but were clearly unsuitable for the development of political programs acceptable for specific countries and regions. Nevertheless, many saw much more in the report than it was said, which not only gave food to unjustified illusions, but also served as a reason for undeserved accusations.

The concept of the limitedness of the Earth is by no means new. However, the report's conclusion that the finiteness of the planet's size necessarily implies the limits of human expansion, went against the prevailing orientation towards growth in world culture and turned into a symbol of a new style of thinking, which was simultaneously welcomed and subjected to merciless curses. The successes of revolutionary transformations in the material sphere have made world culture arrogant. It was and remains a culture that prefers quantity over quality - a civilization that not only does not want to reckon with the real possibilities of life support on the planet, but also thoughtlessly squanders its resources, without ensuring the full and reasonable use of human capabilities.

The limits that Meadows pointed to in his study relate mainly to non-renewable natural resources, such as, for example, geological reserves of minerals, accumulated deposits of organic matter that have accumulated over billions of years, which now represent fossil fuels, as well as soil, air and water - all of this is found on the planet and is available only in limited quantities. That is, his reasoning was based on information about the physical quantities of exploitable non-renewable resources, and assumptions about the rate of their depletion during use. Later estimates required a revision of the original assumptions, showing that the Earth is, in general, more generous than Meadows had anticipated. In addition, the study did not adequately account for the impact of the price mechanism. Meanwhile, it is this mechanism that explains the use of unprofitable deposits, if there are no other ways to meet the demand for this type of resources.

However, even some fair criticism cannot refute the essence of Meadows's conclusions. Even if there is enough of everything in the earth that we need, it still contains fewer types of mineral raw materials than others, and some very few. The cost of primary use, conservation or recycling of many resources is now rapidly increasing and may well become a limiting factor. Of course, then new, more advanced technological methods can come to our aid, however, they will require some sacrifice from us, for example, an increase in energy consumption, which ultimately will simply shift the problem to another area.

In April 1972, Queen Juliana of Holland opened an exhibition in the center of Rotterdam dedicated to the ideas of the Club of Rome. Shortly thereafter, Valéry Giscard D'Estaing, then the French finance minister, organized a series of international meetings with prominent figures from various countries to discuss “where growth is taking us.” In the same year, Aurelio Peccei and Manfred Siebker prepared a At the request of the European Council, the report "The Limits to Growth in Perspective", which summarized all the points of view "for" and "against" the positions of the Club of Rome, expressed in the course of the debate. club the Peace Prize for its "international and worldwide activities", which promotes awareness of the current situation and the preparation of conditions for peace.

Mention should be made here of the ten-year Growth Alternatives program, which was supposed to draw the attention of the world scientific community to the study and discussion of new alternative approaches to growth and its goals. The main idea of the program was to explain that growth alone does not provide a solution to the various social and economic problems facing humanity. It was decided every two years in the state of Texas in the town of Woodland near Houston to hold international conferences - the first took place in 1975 - at which it was supposed to discuss the search for alternative ways of the future development of society, which could be quite realistically carried out and at the same time were not would be based on a continuous pursuit of growth. An international competition was also established: every two years, the five best works in this area are submitted for the Mitchell Prize.

The "Second Report to the Club of Rome" was first presented by Mikhailo Mesarovich (Mesarovich Mikhailo - American mathematician, professor at Cleveland University) and Eduard Pestel at the annual meeting of the Club of Rome in West Berlin in October 1974. The title of the book - "Humanity at the Crossroads" (Mesarovic M. and Restel E. Mankind at the Turning Point, New York, 1974.) - extremely well reflected its content. It very clearly characterized the position of all mankind, which faced a dramatic alternative in the mid-1970s - either to create a truly global society based on solidarity and justice, diversity and unity, interdependence and self-reliance, or to be ) in the face of the disintegration of the human system, which will be accompanied first by regional and then by global catastrophes. The groups of Mesarovich and Pestel came to these conclusions as a result of three years of intensive scientific research on the prospects for the development of mankind.

The technical details of this project can be found in a detailed report, which is based on their week-long presentation of their work in front of 100 scientists from different countries at IIASA and published in six volumes entitled "Multilevel Computer Model of World Development System IIASA Laxenburg Austria 1974).

In 1971, Mikhailo Mesarovich Eduard Pestel decided to contribute to the activities of the Club of Rome and tried to create a new methodology and new models in order to analyze in detail a wide range of possible future options for a modern person. The members of the Club fully supported this initiative and do not regret it at all. The theoretical basis of the Mesarovich-Pestel project was the previous work of Mesarovich, who created a subtle technique for analyzing and calculating complex systems, which he called the theory of multilevel hierarchical systems. Pestel brought with him his vast experience and knowledge of various approaches to the study of world problems, including the early work of the Club of Rome, and his purely German ability for accurate, meticulous, detailed analysis. These two, complementing each other perfectly, organized two research groups - one in the American city of Cleveland, Ohio, the other in Hanover (Germany), rallying first-class young scientists around them and securing the necessary financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation.

During the implementation of the project, special attention was paid to basing all research on the most reliable and reliable factual information about all processes occurring in the world. The adequacy of the data used has been repeatedly checked and rechecked with the help of specialized institutions and private consultants from various fields of science. And all these measures were highly justified. After all, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of objective, reliable quantitative information in the creation and use of any planning system of this kind.

To reflect the reality of our divided, fragmented world, the global system has been subdivided into ten regional subsystems. They were organic, interconnected cells of a single system. Since the dynamics and behavior of the global human system are largely determined by the dynamics and behavior of all its regions, taken separately, and their influence on each other, the principles of identifying these regions and regionalization of the world are of particular importance in this kind of research. As far as possible, factors such as the prevailing historical and cultural traditions, way of life and way of life, the level of economic development, socio-political conditions and the degree of prevalence and relevance of the main, most important problems were taken into account here. And it is not surprising that the ten largest regions in the world turned out to be the following countries and groups of countries: the United States of America and Canada, Western Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, Central Africa, excluding those already mentioned above. sub-regions, South and Southeast Asia, China and, finally, the tenth region - Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Of course, in our time, this kind of regionalization cannot but be very conditional and approximate and serve exclusively for research purposes, because it is well known that most of the really important decisions are made exclusively at the national level. Therefore, when creating such an instrument, it is necessary to proceed, first of all, from the fact that it serves as a sufficiently effective support in making decisions at the level of individual countries. The Mesarovich-Pestel model fully satisfies this requirement and, given the availability of relevant quantitative data, can serve as a decision-making tool within individual countries.

To provide a rational basis for assessing possible options for the development of the future, the method of analyzing alternative scenarios was used. We are unable to predict what will happen in the future, what new technical discoveries will appear; even less predictable are issues that depend on personal or social choice, because they are associated with the unpredictability of human behavior. Moreover, it is quite logical to assume the existence of several different and rather probable future options at once, which will be determined by a number of very different factors. The scenario is a combination of possible future events and alternative socio-political decisions. Without hoping that even one of the created scenarios will accurately represent the real picture of the future, at the same time - provided that all our preparatory work has been done in good faith enough - we can well expect that this real future lies somewhere then within the set of possible scenarios we are considering.

In essence, the use of the Mesarovich-Pestel method made it possible to simulate the dynamics of each of the scenarios and assess what possible consequences on a global or regional scale can lead to certain specific measures aimed either at achieving a "preferred future" or at avoiding development some undesirable phenomena or processes. And in this sense, the method represents the most important potential breakthrough in human control technology. Of course, this technique can and should be significantly improved, in particular, it should more flexibly and adequately reflect the evolution of social conditions and social behavior of people. It is hoped that in the future new methods of rational decision-making will be developed, better and more perfect than this. However, the created tool also has extremely great capabilities in the current conditions.

Although the Club of Rome from the very beginning decided to limit its activities only to the main, fundamental problems of humanity, it is often asked to take part in the discussion of other pressing issues. In principle, I am not against this, provided, of course, that the Club has the time and opportunity to make a truly original, constructive contribution to the development of these issues and that the approach to them is carried out on a long-term, global basis. Speaking "long-term", we mean the time interval that is used in the UN forecasts of doubling the world population, namely the next 30-40 years. This period approximately corresponds to the time required for the change of generations in the management of the world.

In 1990, the first report of the Club of Rome was prepared, entitled The First Global Revolution. Let us formulate once again the main principles on which this report is based:

the statement that it is necessary to involve and participate everyone in the search for ways to overcome the interconnected complex of modern problems;

recognizing that the possibility of constructive change is rooted in the motives and values that determine our behavior;

understanding that the behavior of nations and societies reflects the behavior of individual members of these societies;

acceptance of the postulate that it is hardly worth expecting radical answers to problems from government leaders: thousands of small but wise decisions are needed, reflecting a new level of consciousness of millions of ordinary people;

enforcing the requirement that any privilege at the individual or national level must be accompanied by a corresponding responsibility.