The Best Medicine Is to Stave Off Megadisasters

The Club of Rome was established in 1968, in a period which could still be called the “Belle Epoque. ” It was a period of euphoria over the possibility of continuous economic growth, over the splendid technologies which had already been developed and those which were looming on the horizon, and over the advances in scientific knowledge which led many people to think that the problems of the past were over, or would be soon and that new possibilities for mankind as a whole were just around the corner; a new Eldorado was promised. We wanted to issue a warning that there was as always, but chiefly at that moment of a great upsurge in human hope, the other side of the coin; that society still had very great problems which could become eve graver in the future. Ten years later — that is after a decade, which is just a fleeting moment in the span of history — we tried to determine whether what we had said was true, whether the human condition was in some jeopardy.