The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues.

The foundation of the Club of Rome

It was founded in April 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, an Italian scholar and industrialist, and Alexander King, a Scottish scientist. It raised considerable public attention with its report Limits to Growth, which has sold 30 million copies in more than 30 translations, making it the best selling environmental book in world history. Published in 1972, it predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly oil. The 1973 oil crisis increased public concern about this problem.

At that time, the Club of Rome had an informal "inner group" of six, but no corporate existence. The inner group consisted of:

• Aurelio Peccei;
• Alexander King;
• Hugo Thiemann, Director of the Batelle Institute in Geneva;
• Max Kohnstamm (Netherlands), former Secretary General of the ECSC;
• Jean Saint-Geours, Ministry of Finance in Paris;
• Erich Jantsch, author of "Technological Forecasting".

Organization

According to its website, it is composed of "scientists, economists, businessmen, international high civil servants, heads of state and former heads of state from all five continents who are convinced that the future of humankind is not determined once and for all and that each human being can contribute to the improvement of our societies."

The current President is Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. Other active members include: Benjamin Bassin, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Juan Luis Cebrian, Orio Giarini, Talal Halman, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, José Sarney, Javier Solana, Mugur Isarescu , Kamal Hossain, Esko Kalimo, Ashok Khosla, Martin Lees, Roberto Peccei, Maria Ramirez Ribes, Victor A. Sadovnichy, Adam Schaff, Keith Suter, Majid Tehranian, Raoul Weiler, Anders Wijkman, and Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Annual Meeting of 2005 took place in Norfolk, Virginia, at Old Dominion University. It was held for the first time with members of the young think tank tt30.

Offshoots

In 2001 the Club of Rome created tt30 as a spin-off, an anticipatory thinking (futures) youth think tank for people around the age of 30. See tt30 website

There are national CoR associations in many nations, including a number of European nations, USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Asian nations. These associations analyze national problems in terms of the same factors and give advice nationally to decision-makers.