Environmental alarmism: the Club of Rome and its critics

Abstract

The article is devoted to the ideas of the Club of Rome and their modern reading. The Club of Rome, founded in 1968, is an international society of politicians, business leaders, and scientists, who appeal for mutual tolerance, understanding, and solidarity in relation to the real problems of the world, and the environmental problems in the first place. The members of the Club prescribe the setting of limits to human expansion over nature, which is explained with superfluous “anthropocentric confidence”, after the words of the foundation member Aurelio Peccei. Recently, these ideas of the Club of Rome have been criticized by economists, philosophers, and politicians, being described as “environmental alarmism”, i.e. as groundless alarm relevant to incorrect notions about the inevitability of ecological crisis and its devastating consequences for humanity. However the global environmental crisis is already an undeniable fact and requires a thorough study of the ethical standards of the human behaviour, which are often rooted in moral phenomena such as consumerism, irresponsibility, insensitivity or even selfishness. Nature cannot be only considered as a source of natural resources or benefits to people. The moral motive of nature conservation, despite the power of modern science, is one of the main ideas of the founders and followers of the case of the Club of Rome. It concerns the future where the respect for the value of nature is a new moral principle.

Keywords

• Club of Rome
• economic growth
• environmentalism
• conservation ethics
• alarmism
• anti-alarmism