When Fake News Kill: The 6 Most Stubborn (and Dangerous) Legends in History

Gary Larson's interpretation highlights the absurdity of a legend which is, nevertheless, still widely believed today. It is the basic feature of a series of legends which are wrong, stubborn, and often kill people. 

 

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with the local people of a small Tuscan town in the countryside, when it came out that I am a member of the Club of Rome. At that point, one of them asked me, "Can you tell me how much the Club had to backtrack from their wrong predictions?" I was taken aback for a moment, but then I realized that even in a small town in Tuscany people are not immune from global propaganda. That I was asked that question is simply proof of the incredible resilience of some legends, that we may also call "fake news" or "memes".

It is an incredibly fascinating subject: why are people so easily fooled by legends which not only have no basis in facts but are also plainly absurd? Yet, it is commonplace, one of the features of our world. So, let me try to put down a list of memes -- fake news -- which turned out to be extremely resilient, with a lifetime of decades or even centuries, also dangerous legends which often kill people. The list below is not complete, but I chose examples that seemed to me especially fascinating and instructive.


1. Jews Eat Christian Children. This is one of the oldest and most stubborn legends in human history. Its origins go back to the Middle Ages when untold numbers of Jews were accused and often murdered in Europe on the basis of this accusation which, it should go without saying, had no factual basis. From what we can read, it seems that when a child was found dead, maybe drowned, the people of the local village could find no better explanation than imagine that the Jews had killed him or her in a ritual sacrifice. It may well be that the remote origins of the legend go back to when the Romans accused their Carthaginian enemies to sacrifice children to their Gods. That was probably mostly propaganda, but it may have had some elements of truth: most ancient (and even modern) societies occasionally had to recur to infanticide in difficult times and it may be that the Carthaginians had ritualized it. But, here, the legend has expanded to tell of people kidnapping children from other national/ethnic/religious groups in order to kill and eat them -- a much stronger and nastier accusation. The legend is still alive with the Jews as culprits and has been applied to other groups, it was an element of the persecution against witches in Europe and, in recent times, it has been applied to Communists, North Koreans, and more.

2. "Let Them Eat Cake." A sentence said to have been pronounced by Queen Marie Antoinette  (1755-1793) of France when they told her that the people of Paris had no bread to eat. There is no record of the Queen ever having said that and the story seems to go back to a novel by Russeau which appeared in 1765 when Marie Antoinette was 9 years old. It was attributed to her only in 1843 by Alphonse Karr in Les Guêpes. So, not only the Queen never said anything like that, but she never knew -- or even imagined, that such a sentence would be attributed to her. And not even the people who sentenced her to death had heard of that story, either! Today, the story is well entrenched in the popular imagination. Searching for "Let Them Eat Cake" on Google produces more than 6 million results, even though a good fraction of them seem to be doubtful about the truthfulness of the report. Still, this old legend is remarkable for its persistence.

3. Thomas Malthus' prophecies of doom. It is commonly heard that Thomas Malthus (1766-1843) predicted a catastrophic collapse of the human population for some specific date, variously reported. In some cases, it is said that Malthus also argued for depopulation in terms of exterminating or starving entire ethnical groups. In reality, nowhere in his writings Malthus proposed specific dates for a future collapse and not only that: he never predicted a collapse! All he said was that the human population couldn't expand over a certain limit and that it would stay there, kept in check by famines, wars, and epidemics. Besides, Malthus was a man of moral principles and he never ever dreamed of recommending the extermination of anyone. The origins of the legends about Malthus are difficult to pinpoint but may go back to the 1972 book by John Maddox "The Doomsday Syndrome."  If so, it is a remarkably resilient legend that persists after almost half a century. As for the legend that Malthus recommended the extermination of the poor, it may go back to a 1983 book by Joel Mokyr, "Why Ireland Starved," where the author reported a truncated a statement from a letter by Malthus to make it appear that he recommended the extermination of the Irish. Today, many people still believe in Malthus' "wrong predictions" and may get angry if you try to explain to them how things stand.

4. Mata Hari: The Spy. In 1917, Margaretha Gertruida Zelle (1876-1917), renowned dancer known with her stage name of "Mata Hari," was arrested with the accusation of having passed secret information to the Germans and of having caused the death of tens of thousands of French soldiers. She was declared guilty and shot by a firing squad on Oct 15th, 1917. Today, more than a century later, it seems clear that there was no proof whatsoever against her. She was, simply, framed and killed in a classic propaganda operation, what we call today a "psyop." Nevertheless, the stories told about started to be diffused immediately after her execution and they stuck in the popular imagination. The name of Mata Hari soon became synonymous for the concept of "female spy," and "femme fatale," an evil woman who uses her charm in order to betray her country in order to make money or simply for pure evil. A remarkably stubborn legend that starts being debunked only in recent times. 

5. The Wrong Predictions of the Club of Rome. In 1972, a group of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a report commissioned by the Club of Rome titled "The Limits to Growth." The report examined several possible scenarios for the world's economic systems, concluding that if nothing was done to reduce the consumption rate of non-renewable or slowly renewable resources, the world's economy would have collapsed at some moment during the first half of the 21st century. The report was often criticized but what caused its downfall was an article published in 1986 by Ronald Bailey where the author re-proposed a criticism picked up in an older article: picking some dates from a single column of one of the many tables in the book, Bailey claimed the Club expected some important mineral resources to run out on those specific dates. Since, at Bailey's time, several of these dates were already in the past, he claimed that the Club of Rome had made "wrong predictions." But the dates that Bailey had considered had nothing to do with the scenarios of the study, which never predicted that humankind would run out of anything before the late 21st century. The story is told in detail in a post of mine on "Cassandra's Legacy: it was a classic case of propaganda, but the legend of the "wrong predictions of the Club of Rome" went viral and it is still alive and well today. It is remarkable how the origin of such a diffuse legend can be pinpointed exactly to a single article written by a single person: Mr. Bailey deserves some fame for what he could accomplish, too bad it was a lie. 

6. The Climate Change Hoax. This legend says that there is no such thing as "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (AGW). Rather, the whole story is a giant conspiracy created by scientists in order to gain money, power, and prestige, or perhaps to impose a global communist dictatorship. It goes without saying that there is zero evidence of this theory and that the motivations attributes to scientists are iffy, to say the least. The so-called "Climategate scandal," a corpus of publicly diffused private messages among climate scientists, revealed occasional cases that could be seen (maybe) as poor scientific practice, but never of collusion to sway the public. But this meme was hugely successful. It is relatively recent and its origin can be pinpointed with a certain accuracy: it was with the popular movie "The Global Warming Swindle," released in 2007. Google "ngrams" (covering up to 2008) shows that there was no mention of climate science as a scam or a hoax up to 2007. Google Trends shows how the idea that climate science is a scam or a swindle becomes a search term only after 2007. It picks up interest in the news with the "Climategate" story of 2009 and, today, the legend remains alive and well, we can see it as the thread linking the various forms of criticism against climate science (not based on data, the models overestimate warming, water vapor not considered, islands not sinking, etc.). The interesting element of this story is that it was not the work of a single person, as in the case of Ronald Bailey's memetic attack against the Club of Rome. Making a movie requires financial support and breaking into the server that kept the private messages of climatologists must have taken professional hacking work. Then, at least two movies designed to disparage climate activists were released in this period: "No Pressure" (2010) and "Combustible" (2011). Note also that the most popular anti-science climate site, "Watts Up with That" (WUWT) appeared on the Web in 2006, but it became popular only a few years later. All that suggest a concerted and financed effort to undermine climate science and science in general. Of course, this is an interpretation that cannot be proved, but it is clear that immense damage was done against climate science and science in general. The effects of this damage are still to be seen and scientists don't seem to realize that they find themselves in the same position as the French Nobles at the time of the French revolution. Heads may well start rolling in the near future, and not just in a metaphoric sense. Undermining science, one of the bases of our civilization, is destined to have profound consequences on everything.


This is an incomplete list: there is much more that could be said: Gipsies stealing children, chemtrails, abiotic oil, Russian hackers stealing the US elections, and the 9/11 attacks, a true legend factory. Not all these legends killed people, but several did, and some may kill huge numbers of people in the future -- such as the Climate Hoax one. In any case, the common element is always the search for a scapegoat, a culprit to blame for some problem that doesn't have easy solutions. It seems to be a well-ingrained mechanism working in human minds: once it kicks in, paranoia reigns and anyone, individuals, groups, entire societies, can become the target of a violent social revenge mechanism. The future will see plenty of problems, much bigger than those we are facing nowadays. How they will be interpreted and who will be taken as the target for revenge is all to be seen.

Epistemology of a Dying Empire: Can Growth Last Forever?

Recently, Michael Liebreich published an article titled "The Secret of Eternal Growth." I have been mulling over in my head if it is appropriate to spend time discussing one more mishmash of legends, including the one that's by now a classic, the "errors" that the Club of Rome is said to have made with the 1972 report, "The Limits to Growth." Eventually, I decided that it was worth a post, not so much because the post by Liebreich is especially wrongheaded or silly, but because it illustrates one basic point of our civilization: who, and how, takes decisions? On which basis?

In the end, I think we have a problem of epistemology, the question of the nature of knowledge. In order to make decisions, you have to know what you are doing -- at least in principle. In other words, you need some kind of "model" of reality in order to be able to act on it. It was Jay Forrester, the father of system dynamics and the originator of the "Limits to Growth" report who pointed out that, (World Dynamics, 1971, p. 14)

Everyone uses models all the time. Every person in his private life and in his community life uses models for decision making. The mental image of the world around one, carried in each individual’s head, is a model. One does not have a family, a business, a city, a government, or a country in his head. He has only selected concepts and relationships that he uses to represent the real system.

And the big question is where these "selected concepts" come from. My impression is that the mind of our leaders is a jumble of ideas and concepts grafted from haphazard messages that come from the media. Our leaders use no quantitative model to take their decision, only whim and feelings. This is how an idea such as MAGA came about.

The point is that there seems to exist a certain convergence of ideas and concepts in the mediasphere. Somehow, a consensus tends to appear and it is reinforced by repetition. This is how the world's leadership tends to assume the existence of some self-evident truths, such as that economic growth is always good.

The article by Liebrich is a good example of this process. We have an article written by someone who is influential: he is senior contributor at Bloomberg, and also an engineer. What is most disheartening about it is how it is based on half-baked ideas, superficial interpretations, half-truths, and legends. Just as an example, we read in the article that:

. . . a group of concerned environmentalists calling themselves the Club of Rome invited one of the doyens of the new field of computer modelling, Jay Forrester, to create a simulation of the world economy and its interaction with the environment. In 1972 his marvellous black box produced another best-seller, Limits to Growth (iv), which purported to prove that almost every combination of economic parameters ended up not just with growth slowing, but with an overshoot and collapse. This finding, so congenial to the model’s commissioners, stemmed entirely from errors in its structure, as pointed out by a then fresh-faced young economics professor at Yale, William Nordhaus.

Note how Liebrich provides a reference to the "Limits to Growth" book, but none for the supposed "pointing out of the errors in its structure" by the "fresh-faced" William Nordhaus. The reality is that Nordhaus wrote a paper criticizing Forrester in 1973 and Forrester responded to it with another paper, defending his approach. It is perfectly legitimate to think that Nordhaus was right and Forrester wrong, but you can't say that that the purported "errors" in the model are an established fact. I discussed this story in my book, "The Limits to Growth Revisited" and in a recent post on "Cassandra's legacy." Basically, Liebrich reported a legend without bothering too much about verifying it.

There is much more in Liebrich paper that can be criticized in terms of mistakes, personal attacks, misinterpretations, and more (see also another critical assessment by Tim Jackson). But the point is how ideas are thrown into the mediasphere and there they float, to be picked up by human minds as flu viruses flow in the air. Here, Liebreich's thesis is likely to have a certain influence because it is so cleverly presented: basically it tells us that you can eat the pie and still have it. It tells people that humankind can keep growing while reducing its impact on the ecosystem. It is like telling a heroin addict that heroine is good for health and it is OK to continue using it because technological progress will make it possible to get the same kick - or even more kick - from a lower dose. That is what a heroin addict likes to hear, but it won't work in the real world.

The same is true for our leaders and for all of us. We tend to make choices on the basis of what we like, not on how things stand. The sickness of the Empire, in the end, is just bad epistemology.



(h/t Anders Wijkman and Nora Bateson)

Did the Club of Rome Ever Disavow "The Limits to Growth"? A Story of Ordinary Disinformation

Aurelio Peccei in 1969, when he was appointed the first president of the Club of Rome

The Club of Rome is inextricably linked to the legendary report that it commissioned to a group of MIT researchers in 1972, "The Limits to Growth." Today, nearly 50 years later, we still have to come to terms with a vision that contradicts the core of some of humankind's most cherished beliefs. The report tells us that we cannot keep growing forever and that we have to stop considering everything we see around us as ours by divine right. 

Not surprisingly, the report generated strong feelings and, with them, there came plenty of disinformation and legends. Some cast the Club of Rome in the role of a secret organization with dark and dire purposes, others aimed at the Limits report, claiming that it was "wrong" or, worse, purposefully designed to deceive the public. I wrote an entire book on this subject (The Limits to Growth Revisited): in short, most of these stories are false but some contain grains of truth and all of them tell us something about how we humans don't just deny bad news, we tend to demonize the bearers.

One of these legends states that the leaders of the Club of Rome disavowed their brainchild, The Limits to Growth and, in doing so, they admitted that it had been not only wrong, but actually an attempt to mislead the public. It is an old legend but, as all legends, it is surprisingly persistent and you can still see it mentioned in recent times (for instance, here and here) as if it were the obvious truth. It is not: it is a good example of how disinformation works.

The origins of the legend go back to Julian Simon (1932-1998), flamboyant defender of economic growth and self-styled "doomslayer." Simon was a skilled polemicist who used with remarkable effectiveness all the standard techniques of disinformation. So, in his book, "The Ultimate Resource" (1981 edition, p. 286) Simon writes (highlighting mine)

The most compelling criticism of the Limits to Growth simulation, however, was made by the sponsoring Club of Rome itself. Just four years after the foofaraw created by the book's publication and huge circulation -- an incredible 4 million copies were sold -- the Club of Rome "reversed its position" and "came out for more growth" [..] The explanation of this reversal, as reported in "Time" is a masterpiece of face saving double talk.

"The Club's founder, Italian industrialist "Aurelio Peccei, says that Limits was intended to jolt people from the comfortable idea that present growth trends could continue indefinitely. That done, he says, the Club could then seek ways to close the widening gap between rich and poor nations -- inequities that, if they continue, could all too easily lead to famine, pollution, and war. The Club's startling shift, Peccei says, is thus not so much a turnabout as part of an evolving strategy"

In other words, the Club of Rome sponsored and disseminated untruths in an attempt to scare us. Having scared many people with these lies, the Club can now tell people the real truth. 

So, where does all that come from? I can't find on the Web the original "Time" article that Simon cites, but there are other reports available on the declarations that Aurelio Peccei (founder, and at the time president, of the Club of Rome) released in 1976, during a meeting held in Philadelphia. The journalists who interviewed Peccei were impressed by what they perceived as a reversal of previous Club's policies, to the point that Newsweek titled its report (according to the St. Louis Post) "Has the Club of Rome publicly abjured?" Peccei was said (according to the New York Times) to have stated that, "Naturally, we realize that no-growth is neither possible nor desirable,"

Is that enough to say that the Club of Rome had "reversed its position"? Not at all. There was nothing new in Peccei's statements. Already in 1973, one year after the pubblication of Limits, the Club produced a document about the report signed by the executive committee and titled "The New Threshold."   The document stated that:

An erroneous image of the Club has, therefore, formed as a group advocating zero growth. Again, the possible consequences of unregulated growth of the industrialized societies and, still more, those which would arise if growth were abruptly brought to a halt, has disturbed some of the less developed countries where, we have already said, the report is all too easily seen as a selfish proposal from the developed world which would still further aggravate the difficulties of the great mass of underprivileged on our planet.

And that is not a "face-saving double talk," as Simon claimed. It is a necessary consequence of the views of the Club from its formation. Aurelio Peccei had started the Club on the basis of what he called the "problematique" or the "predicament" of humankind. From his first public speech on this subject, in 1965 (you can find it here), it is clear that he saw the problems facing humankind mainly in terms of a fair distribution of the available resources, avoidance of wars, elimination of poverty, health care for everyone, and the like. (see also this post by Irv Mills). Peccei didn't imagine the future of humankind in terms of a collapse: the concept of "overshoot and collapse" of socioeconomic systems didn't exist at that time, it was developed and diffused only in the 1970s by Jay Forrester.

So, the results of "The Limits to Growth" study, with their scenarios of probable collapse, must have been a shock for Peccei and the other members of the Club of Rome. Still, it is clear from what they wrote afterward that they understood the logic and the consequences of the report they had commissioned - they never "disavowed" it, even though over the years some individual members criticized the study in various ways, but that's anther story.

Over the years, the Club of Rome and the Limits have been seen as the same thing, sometimes confusing who did exactly what. In reality, they are two distinct and different things. The Club of Rome had its roots in the "problematique" devised by Peccei and its members worked at integrating the Limits results within their worldview. It was clear to them that "The Limits to Growth" aggregated all the world's national economies into average parameters. As a consequence, "zero growth" as a global policy would have meant maintaining the economic gap separating the rich and the poor country. And that was not what Peccei and the others had in mind. Hence, Peccei's statement in 1976 "Naturally, we realize that no-growth is neither possible nor desirable," In another report, they said that the Limits "is a beginning and not an end." That is the origin of the other 1976 statement by Peccei "the limits‐to‐growth report had served its purpose of “getting the world's attention.”

And here we are: no lies, no disavowal, no scare tactics. What we have, instead, is a stark reminder of how disinformation works. Note the narrative technique used by Simon: he says that "Having scared many people with these lies, the Club can now tell people the real truth." You need about 3 seconds to deconstruct this statement and note how it makes no sense: if the Club successfully told lies to the public, why should it stop doing that? What could the Club possibly gain by publicly confessing of having lied? But narrative follows special rules and what we have here is a common trope of many modern movies: at some moment, the villains may explicitly confess their crimes (sometimes called badass boast) out of pure arrogance. So, the trick Simon is using here is to cast the Club of Rome into the role of the villains in narrative terms. It is an effective trick in an age in which we can't distinguish reality from narrative anymore: it is the dark art called "creating one's own reality."

Nearly 50 years have passed since the Limits report was published and it is safe to say that most people remember it the way it was described by the propaganda of the 1990s, as a "wrong-headed" study (if they remember it at all). But does that mean that it has been forgotten forever? While it is true that "Google Trends" doesn't show any increased interest in the "Limits" itself, there is growing interest in the concept of slowing down economic growth or avoiding altoghether. And "The Limits to Growth" is showing a remarkable return of interest in the scientific literature. Does that means we will see a return of interest in it also in the mainstream debate? Why not? After all, in the long run, truth always beats disinformation.

____________________________________________

Here is the article on the St. Louis Post about Peccei's declarations, with several errors resulting from OCR, but overall readable

Time magazine wrote recently in an essay on futurology, "Men hunger for predictions as they hunger for bread in a famine." The starving have recently been thrown a few loaves by the self-appointed prophets of the twentieth century. The oracular prophecies out of the computer have been muted since the oil crisis of 1973 broke the back of their optimistic curves of growth. The guild of soothsayers fell out of favor. Now after a long penitent silence they are making a comeback. Herman Kahn, director of the Hudson Institute and an unshakable optimist, has published a new study of the future entitled. "The Next 200 Years." His conclusion is that in the year 2176 the world population will have reached a total of 15 billion and will be living comfortable with a per ants than were predicted for 1975. The Wall Street Journal says the dreams of unlimited energy, cheap nuclear-generated electricity, fivefold increase in farm yields and the final victory over cancer before the end of the century can be forgotten. The "revised future" looks somewhat different. By the year 2000 food will be three times as dear as it is now, hot counting currency inflation. Automatic highways will not be built. At best, automobiles will have a more efficient fuel consumption. The super-jumbo jets with 1000 seats will not be flying by the end of the '70s, but at the earliest, by the '90s. The future was being revised in Philadelphia also. "Has the Club of Rome publicly abjured?" asked Newsweek, in view of its new slogan. The club, a loose association of about 100 industrialists and academics from various countries, has been regarded so far as a stern warning against too optimistic forecasts. If the present growth trend continues, it said in 1972, the limits of growth would be reached sometime within the next 100 years. Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome, denied in Philadelphia that its members had put themselves forward as capita income of about $20,000. Kahn's collaborator, Edmund Still-man, in a study commissioned by a French private bank, prophesies a particularly rosy future for the French. Very soon after 1980 France will overtake West Germany in production of goods and services to become Number One in Europe. The "Club of Rome," which in 1972 postulated the "limits of growth" and attracted powerful criticism, has come up with a slightly less pessimistic view of the world. Its new motto is "organic growth" and the optimistic slogan for its latest congress in Philadelphia was "New Horizons for Humanity." In a 10-part series the Wall Street Journal discusses which of the prophecies made 10 years ago have come true and which of them have to be corrected. The paper's researchers have found that the biggest mistake made by the futurologists has been their projections of population growth. On the one hand a birth explosion and a declining death rate in the developing countries have combined to increase the total world population much faster than anticipated. But in the United States, for instance, the trend is reversed. Already now there are 12,000,000 fewer inhabit advocates of zero population growth. Their study "Limits of Growth" which has sold in the meantime, 2,000,-000 copies was only intended, he says as a shock and a way of directing public attention to the problems. "Naturally we realize that no-growth is neither possible nor desirable," he said. According to the modified formula, developed by the West German, Prof. Eduard Pestel, and his American colleague, Mihailo Mesarovic, what is needed now is "directed growth." "The important thing is in which way growth takes place, with what technology and in what branches of the economy," said Professor Ervin Laszlo of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. The outlines of a new world economic order are being drawn up in a new study commissioned by the Club of Rome from the Dutch economist and Nobel prizewinner Jan Tinbergen. Working with 20 other experts, he expects to have it ready by autumn of this year. The rough outline was already plain in Philadelphia larger currency reserves for the speedier financing of development projects in the Third World, stricter control of the multinational concerns and a world-wide co-ordinator of energy 'Men hunger for predictions as they hunger for bread in a famine . . .

Saving the World: Top-Down or Bottom-Up? A Review of the Latest Report to the Club of Rome, "Come On"

Come On: Capitalism, Short-termism and the Destruction of the Planet. A new Report from the Club of Rome. By Ernst von Weizsaecker and Anders Wijkman -  Book Review by Ugo Bardi

Nearly half a century has passed since the publication, in 1972, of the first – and still the most famous – report of the Club of Rome, “The Limits to Growth.” That first report was heavily criticized but, nowadays, it is turning out that it had correctly identified the main lines of the trajectory that the human industrial society was to follow and is still following. To the authors of this report and to their mentor, Jay Forrester, goes the merit of having identified for the first time the critical problem that we are facing nowadays, that of “overshoot”, exceeding the limits that the planetary ecosphere can sustain and forcing humankind to a return within the limits that could be painful or even disastrous.

Today, the Club of Rome keeps following its tradition of studying the long-term prospects of humankind facing the twin challenges of resource depletion and climate change. The latest report of the Club on these matters is “Come On” by Anders Wijkman and Ernst Von Weizsacker, published with Springer in 2017, in occasion of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Club.

Clearly, this is a book which has been thoroughly planned and carefully created. The text is divided into three parts: 1) A review of the currently unsustainable trends, 2) A review of how to look at the situation 3) A discussion of solutions designed to avoid disaster. It is a sort of Aristotelian syllogism structure.

The first part, the review of the current trends, is – in my opinion – the best part of the book. It is a well thought-out review which doesn’t shun from facing some politically unnameable subjects, such as that of overpopulation and of the need to stop its growth. The unsustainable nature of the current agricultural system is also discussed in detail here. This section is also an excellent summary of the results of the first version of “The Limits to Growth” and how the scenarios of that early work have played out in our world. The “Come on!” here, refers to how obvious all this should be, but it isn’t in the current debate.

The second part of the book is a review of the theories and models currently used to understand the situation in which we find ourselves. This section provides a description of religious views of the relation of humankind with the world, starting with the Pope’s encyclical letter “Laudato si” and then moves to a detailed criticism of the current economic theories. It includes also a very interesting section on the moral imperative of change and on the need of a “new enlightenment” rather than a “new rationalism.” It is correctly recognized that a purely rational choice is often framed in a short-term vision and it may lead to effects opposite to those intended.

In this second section, the “Come On” is referred to the need of not sticking to outdated but still current philosophies, especially in economics. It is what the authors call a "mind shift," that we may describe in terms of the often mentioned (although probably apocryphal) quote by Albert Einstein, "we cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them.” This is the context in which the quest for a new enlightenment should be seen. A fundamental element of this vision is the circular economy, returning to the ecosystem what we took from the ecosystem. It is a concept that's making inroads in the debate, but much work remains to be done to make it real and not just an empty slogan.

Finally, the third part of the book. This is the most ambitious section, indeed it is as long as the first two summed together. It is also the most difficult and complex: what to do, in practice? Here, the authors face a problem that has affected the Club’s analysis over the past 50 years: who should act to save humankind from destruction?

The initial attitude of the Club on this point was heavily influenced by the personality of the Club’s founder, Aurelio Peccei. In the 1960s, Peccei had developed a vision that saw humankind as an ekklesia, a gathering of free and equal citizens of the world. As a consequence, the Club tended to propose actions that were to be agreed upon by all the citizens of the Earth by means of a democratic process. It was a top-down vision, in the sense that it implied that the choices made by the people were to be enforced by some kind of world government, or at least by an association of all the existing governments

As we all know, this approach has not worked. Peccei was misunderstood and the Club of Rome was accused of planning a world dictatorship and all sorts of nefarious actions, including even a new holocaust designed for population control. It was all false. As you can read in my book "The Limits to Growth Revisited," it was just propaganda, but it turned out to be effective in demonizing the Club of Rome and protecting the special interests of various lobbies. But then, what to do?

50 years after that first report, the authors of “Come On” describe a different approach, basically focused on the “bottom-up” strategy. This choice appears most clearly in the third section of the book, which is dedicated to practical, implementable solutions, such as agro-ecology, the blue economy, regenerative urbanization, benign investments, and much more. The basic idea is always the same: do not force people not to do something with laws coming from a government (top-down). Encourage them to choose to do something for their own benefit (bottom-up).

For instance, instead of forcing people to emit less CO2, encourage them to use technologies which don’t emit it and that make people save money. Or help people seeing the economic advantages of waste recycling. Or show them how they can save money by using the public transportation system instead of private cars. Here, the "Come on" statement refers to pushing people to overcome their inertia and stop sticking to their old ways simply because they never thought there were other ways of doing the same things.

The third chapter goes on for about 100 pages and I won’t try to summarize it here – it is surely worth reading for the wealth of ideas it carries. But will this approach work? The answer remains unclear. If we compare the "top-down" and the "bottom-up" approaches, we see that neither has done much to stop the ongoing unsustainable trends. Decades of attempts of setting up top-down international treaties to reduce, for instance, the overexploitation of resources has brought very little in terms of results - for instance, the CO2 emissions keep increasing. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach is successful in some areas, but not with most people. Just as an example, it would seem strange that people buy the expensive and useless vehicles called "SUVs." It is not a rational choice, one feels like telling SUV owners something like "come on, why are you wasting your money in this way?" Yet - today - about one car in three sold in Western countries is an SUV. The fact that some people choose to use bicycles, instead, doesn't change the situation.

All this doesn't mean that the world is not changing, just that it is not changing fast enough (and this can be quantitatively demonstrated). It means, also, that we have to keep pushing for the change to occur in the right direction. Probably, neither a purely bottom-up nor a purely top-down approach can save humankind. We need an integrated approach. The "Come on" book is a step in the right direction.

Presentation of "The Seneca Effect" in Florence, on April 5th, 2018

This Thursday, in Florence, we'll have the first "official" presentation of my book "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017), the 42nd report to the Club of Roma. The presentation will be in the Aula Magna of the University of Florence. The President (*) of the  University of Florence,  prof. Luigi Dei, will introduce and comment the book. Then we'll have two presentation, one by the author and the other by Dr. Roberto Peccei, Vice-president of the Club of Rome (in the photo)



The presentations will be in Italian, everyone interested is welcome! Below, a more detailed description of the event.

(*) I think that "president" is the best translation for the role that in Italian we call "rettore"

Book Review: Food Scarcity. Unavoidable by 2100?

This is an excerpt from the review by Ugo Bardi published on the "Journal of Population and Sustainability"

Scientific studies that examine the food supply and its correlation to human population have a long tradition that goes back to Thomas Malthus and his “An Essay on the Future of Population“ of 1798. From then on, the field has remained politically charged. Still today, Malthus is often dismissed as a doomsday prophet whose apocalyptic predictions turned out to be wrong. But Malthus lacked the modern concept of “overshoot and collapse” and he never predicted the kind of population crashes that we associate to modern famines.

Another study often accused of having been overly catastrophistic in terms of the future of the human population is the report to the Club of Rome titled “The Limits to Growth”, published in its first version in 1972. This is also a misinterpretation, since none of the several scenarios reported in 1972 foresaw a population decline before entering the second half of the 21st century.

Overall, studies in this field may be considered pessimistic or optimistic: it is a fact that, so far, the world's food supply system has been able to cope with an increasing population that is reaching today about 7.5 billion people. The question is for how long that will be possible.

In analogy with the first report to the Club of Rome, the recent book by Weiler and Demuynck, "Food Scarcity" approaches an old problem with a new methodology. While “The Limits to Growth” was one of the first studies to apply system dynamics to the study of the economy, “Food Scarcity” is among the first studies that applies the modern network theory to the world’s food system. The resulting book is an ambitious attempt to pack an enormous amount of material into just 150 pages. It starts with a review of the situation of the world’s food supply with extensive data on the different climate systems, cultivation technologies, geographical conditions, and more.

Is it a successful attempt? Under several respects, yes. An integrated approach is always better than the piecemeal approach of many superficial reports that don't go farther than admiring the increases in agricultural yield obtained so far and assuming that the trend can be continued forever and ever in the future. "Food Scarcity" does much better than this and identifies the limits to the world's food production system, which may lead to scarcity by 2100 or even earlier.

At the same time "Food Scarcity" has limits in its approach dedicated mainly to food production. Surely, it is the central point of the story, but food supply is not the same thing as food production. In particular, there is no mention in the book of the importance of the financial system in the issue of feeding the world’s population. As I argue in my book, "The Seneca Effect", food is delivered to people today because people are able to buy it, otherwise it would rot where it is produced. A long lasting global financial crisis could crash the food supply system and create again major famines. And for such an event, we may not have to wait for the food production system to reach its limits in 2100.

So, by all means an interesting book, well worth reading even though you have to take into account its aims and purposes. You can read the complete review by Ugo Bardi at "The Journal of Population and Sustainabilty" 

The Seneca Paradox: if mineral depletion is a problem, how is it that we don't see its effects?

With oil prices remaining low and with production apparently more than sufficient to satisfy the demand, most people have jumped to the conclusion that all mineral resources are abundant and not a concern for the foreseeable future. Yet, the problem remains: mineral resources are not infinite. The solution to the conondrum may be in the "Seneca Effect." It is an insidious kind of effect that hides future risks behind an apparently safe and robust growth. 

The story of the Club of Rome starts with the issue of natural resources. In the 1960s, it had become clear to the Club's founder, Aurelio Peccei, that the world's resources were finite and to ask the question of how that was to affect humankind. It was the origin of the first and the best-known report to the Club of Rome, "The Limits to Growth," published in 1972.


The 1972 report already provided answers to the question of depletion. It turned out that resource scarcity would limit the growth of the world's economy and, eventually, lead it to decline. This conclusion was often misunderstood as meaning that humankind would soon "run out" of oil, gas, or some other resource; but that was never stated in the report and it never was the point.


In 2014, the Club of Rome produced another report titled "Extracted" in English and "Der Geplunderte Planete" in German that reiterated the earlier conclusions. The author of the report, Ugo Bardi, a researcher at the University of Florence, Italy, concluded that the problem of mineral depletion was real and that it was progressively getting worse.

Yet, these conclusions are far from being generally accepted. Depletion, it seems, is still considered a non-problem, especially in the extractive industry. "If depletion is really a problem," industry representatives often say, "how come that we are still producing mineral commodities at the highest rates ever seen in history? Besides, we observe that our production costs are not significantly increased when we use lower grade ores."

So, is mineral depletion an existential threat to human civilization? Or is it just a marginal problem that can be fixed by some technological improvements? This is truly a fundamental question for the future of humankind. An answer is provided by the latest report to the Club of Rome that was published in 2017, "The Seneca Effect."

Taking inspiration from something that the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca said, the author of the study, Ugo Bardi, examines the trajectory of an economic system subjected to the dual strain of mineral depletion and pollution. The result is the "Seneca Curve", a graphical depiction of Seneca's statement that "Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid." It is something well known in everyday life, but the study could confirm it using mathematical models. Here is the curve as calculated by simulations.

The "Seneca Effect" or the "Seneca Paradox" explains why mineral depletion is a problem but, at present, we are not feeling its effects. We haven't yet reached the summit of the curve and we are not seeing the cliff awaiting us. So far, the extractive industry has been able to mask the effects of depletion by means of economies of scale. That has been possible as long as production keeps increasing, which has been the case up to now for most mineral commodities. The problem is that this strategy cannot last forever: mineral resources are not infinite. 

A good example of this effect can be found in the oil industry. At present, all fears of "running out" of oil seem to have been dispelled by the low market prices and by the still increasing production. Both factors give the impression of an abundance of cheap oil that could last for a long time - if not forever. But this is exactly the result of the shape of the Seneca Curve. As long as we don't reach the start of the cliff, we don't see it. 

But ruin, as Seneca said, may be rapid. Consider the current climate situation and the urgent need of reducing carbon emissions. Consider the rapid switch to electric vehicles, often seen as a way to fighting climate change. Consider that in the US more than 60% of the market for crude oil product is for private vehicles. Then, you see that if people were to start replacing their old cars and trucks with electric ones (something that they should do by all means for the sake of our survival), the oil industry would lose a big bite of its market. 

For the oil industry, losing a significant fraction of their market is not just a question of downsizing;  it is their death knell. It is here that the "Seneca Effect" starts playing its role. The economies of scale which had allowed the industry to overcome the effects of depletion become diseconomies of scale, increasing costs and reducing profits. The industry becomes unable to attract new investments; it starts shrinking and eventually disappears: it is what Seneca said, "ruin is rapid". 

The decline of the oil industry has already been ongoing in several regions of the world and the loss of efficiency due to scaling down is well documented (see, e.g. Hall et al. 2014). In recent times, the US industry has been able to start a new cycle of oil extraction with "Shale oil" (more properly, "tight oil") but that simply means to postpone the unavoidable and the Seneca Cliff of shale oil may be just around the corner. 

Humankind is facing a difficult situation right now, with the twin threats of depletion and pollution working together to cause a decline that could be very rapid, as it is has been often the case for past civilization. The "Seneca Effect" makes the situation all the more insidious because at present we have only a few hints of the future decline but when we will see the cliff in front of us it may be too late to avoid it in full. 

Yet, today we have powerful tools in the form of the science of complex systems. If we are willing to use them, these tools allow us to understand the future and to be prepared for it. If we understand the threats we face, they may be seen as opportunities. So, the impending ruin of the oil industry is not a threat but an opportunity to avoid, or at least mitigate, a future climate disaster. 

Once we understand this point, the strategy becomes clear: do not fight the unavoidable; do not try to keep the oil industry alive at all costs; that's exactly what makes the Seneca Cliff steeper. Instead, favor the unavoidable change. it means helping the oil industry to disappear by favoring its replacement by something less polluting and more sustainable. Similar strategies are possible for many polluting industries still common today.

As always, the future is nothing but the choices we make and there is still time to make good choices. The Seneca cliff of the human civilization will happen only if we choose to make it happen. 

The First Summer Academy of the Club of Rome, a Comment by Tatiana Yugay

Tatiana Yugay is professor at the Plekhanov University in Moscow. She is an expert in issues related to the world market of oil and gas. A post of her on this subject can be found here. Above, you can see her in a tree-hugging moment at the Botanical Garden of the University of Florence.

Now that Ugo Bardi has finished presenting on his blog the main speakers at the 1st Club of Rome Summer Academy 2017, at the Florence University, I'd like to share my impressions about this great event. Of course, the speakers were rather prominent, all of them - authors of solid books and\or founders of innovative movements but it was no less interesting to watch reaction and feedback from the audience. Being a university professor, I'm very curious to observe differences between my students and those from other universities.

I was really delighted to meet so many competent and enthusiastic young intellectuals who were ready to save the world today! They were great listeners; very supportive and pro-active at the same time. They put very thoughtful and intelligent questions, sometimes not easy to answer. They were ready to laugh at a good joke or cheer at a statement that met their opinion.

While exchanging opinions with some participants during coffee breaks, I understood that they appreciated most of all those speakers who explored new fields of knowledge, used novel approaches or presented results of their own research illustrated by concrete data.

They wouldn't let go Anders Wijkman, Co-President of the Club of Rome, after his presentation of the Club's concepts. They asked plenty of questions to Kate Pickett from the University of York, who during many years studied problems of inequality. I was glad that contemporary young people are so much concerned about this social problem. They applauded to Ugo Bardi's visual demonstration of the Seneca Cliff.

They were deeply impressed by a groundbreaking discourse by Chandran Nair, Founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow. In all other respects, they were quite normal modern people. They enjoyed the cultural program in fabulous Florence, dinners in sustainable gardens and each other's company. In sum, this very special young audience is a dream of every university professor and I wish all of them to realize their ambitious plans and desires!

Young activists: are they enough to save the world? Notes from the 1st Summer School of the Club of Rome

Above, an image that I think summarizes the spirit of the 1st Summer School of the Club of Rome, held this September in Florence. A lot of good will, enthusiastic young (and not so young) people, a stellar cast of speakers, in-depth discussions, and state of the art world modeling. But is it enough?

A week of full immersion in the First Summer School of the Club of Rome. Truly an experience for many reasons. One was the sheer physical fatigue of keeping track of everything. If you are one of the organizers of an event like this one, you can't even think that something could go wrong while many sessions are taking place together and people move from one place to another. I don't think that in my life it ever happened to me that I went to bed and I couldn't sleep because I was too tired. But, this time, yes, it happened.

Was it worth it? As far as I can say, yes. It was something that I would have loved to attend when I was in my 20s; it would have changed my life. Actually, my life changed anyway, as human lives tend to do. But for these young people (some young at heart) it was surely a positive experience. I was only marginally involved in assembling the school's program, but the staff of the Club of Rome did a great job in putting together a number of high level speakers and also organizing plenty of space for seminars and informal discussion. It was also a good idea to break the school in two halves, with the Sunday in between left free for the social program and for participants to relax and enjoy their time together. We offered them a chance to visit places that the ordinary tourist has no time to see. From the "Skeleton Room" of the "La Specola" science museum to the Roman Theater on the Hill of Fiesole and much more, including an "archeological dinner" where they were served the food that the ancient Etruscans ate (or that we believe they ate; the archaeology of cuisine is an iffy matter). Maybe these people won't change the world by themselves alone, but I think they will at least try. For sure, they will have a hard time; much harder than we had at their age. At least, they have been warned on what to expect.

In a series of posts on the Cassandra blog (just scroll down), you'll find descriptions and impressions of some of the talks. In this post, here are a few pictures to give you some idea of the friendly atmosphere of the Academy.

The Rector of the University of Florence, Luigi Dei, inaugurates the academy.

Ice-breaking games with the Secretary General of the Club of Rome, Graeme Maxton 

The discussion was always lively, with plenty of questions and comments during and after the talks. Here, the participants are crowding to ask question to Chandran Nair.

Testing state of the art world models in an interactive session. With Ilaria Perissi (red shirt) and Jordi Solé (standing with gray shirt)

Some participants Trying a "lampredotto" (organ meat) sandwich, a traditional Florentine food.

The skeleton room of the La Specola Museum, with curator Gianna Innocenti.

Visiting the Wax Room of the Specola museum. These ancient wax pieces had an important role in the progress of anatomy a few centuries ago. Now they are mainly a curiosity, but they have historical value and they are surely impressive. 

Some of the participants explore the ruins of the ancient Roman Theater of Fiesole

The Etruscan dinner: it included some plain food such as eggs, that seem to have been an Etruscan favorite dish, to reconstructions of the ancient "garum" fish sauce and something called "scottiglia", which is a curious mix of meat and strange sauces that (maybe) the Etruscans would eat.

And, finally, the traditional group photo in front of the university building of Via Capponi, in Florence

The Way Nature Works: How Common is the Seneca Curve? Ugo Bardi's Speech at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome in Florence

Ugo Bardi at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome in Florence, September 2017. 

My talk at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome was mainly a presentation of my latest book, "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017). In practice, of course, a book contains many more things than you can say in a 40 minute speech. So, I tried to concentrate on the idea that the behavior I call "the Seneca Curve" is very common, even universal. Below, you can see the Seneca Curve: things go up slowly but collapse rapidly, as the Roman philosopher Seneca said first some two thousand years ago. You may see the same curve also on the t-shirt I was wearing at the Academy.

You may have heard the old Latin motto, "Natura non facit saltus" (Nature doesn't make jumps) meaning that things change gradually, not abruptly. It may be true in many circumstances but, in practice, it is wholly normal that Nature accumulates energy potentials (as when you inflate a balloon) and then releases them all of a sudden (as when you puncture a balloon). This is the theme of the cover of the German version of my book.

There are reasons why Nature behaves in this way, but the point I made at the school was not so much about why the curve is so common but how human beings are not normally aware of it. In fact, our thought is often shaped by the idea that things will continue evolving the way they have been evolving up to a certain point. Just think about economic growth, and you'll notice how economists expect it to continue forever. It goes without saying that the economy is one of those complex systems which are most vulnerable to the Seneca collapse.

So, I tried to stress that the understanding that the Seneca Curve exists and it is common is a recent discovery. Even though Seneca had understood it by intuition already almost 2000 years ago, in its modern form it is less than a century old. It was proposed for the first time by Jay Forrester in the 1960s and it was enshrined in "The Limits to Growth" study of 1972, even though the term "Seneca Effect" was not used.

During my talk, I showed this image to evidence how our ideas on the path that complex systems follow evolved over time.

You see how modern the idea of "overshoot" (and the subsequent collapse) is. Malthus just didn't have it. Despite being often accused of catastrophism, he couldn't envisage societal collapse; he lacked the necessary intellectual tools. He was an optimist! Today, we have this concept. We know that complex systems tend not just to decline, they tend to collapse. But this perception is totally missing in the general debate.

When you mention societal collapse, there are two possible reactions. The most common one is that such a thing will never happen. Then, if you manage to convince people that it is possible, they endeavor to do everything they can to keep the system going; whatever it takes. They don't realize that when you exceed the carrying capacity of the system, you have to come back, one way or another. And the more you try to stay above the limit, the faster and the harsher the return will be. What you have to do is to ease the collapse, follow it, not try to stop it. Otherwise, it will be worse.

So, we seem to have a cultural stumbling block, here. Maybe we'll never overcome it, or perhaps yes, who knows? In older times, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a stoic philosopher just like Seneca, had this concept rather clear. He knew that everything in the world is impermanent; including the Roman Empire.  Being a virtuous man, he did everything in his power to do his duty as Emperor. But he recognized his limits and that's what he said in his "Meditations."

We should recognize our limits, too. Follow change, don't try to stop it. Nature is changing all things we see and out of their substance it will make new things in order that the world will be ever new. This is the way Nature works.

A depressed man with a smiling face: Jorgen Randers speaks at the Summer School of the Club of Rome in Florence

This is not a picture taken at the summer school, but it is Jorgen Randers, the real one!

Jorgen Randers' speech at the Summer School at the Club of Rome has been dramatically different from the standard speech dealing with sustainability. Randers defined himself as a "depressed man with a smiling face" and he summarized his 47 years of work to promote sustainability as an utter failure. "We are worse off now," he said, "than we were 50 years ago. 

What went wrong? Randers asked to the audience to propose reasons. He got more than a dozen, from the financial system to greed. But he said that none of these is the real reason. It is not a fault of the government, it is not a fault of corporations, it is not a fault of banks. It is, simply, the fault of people. According to Randers, people are simply unable to postpone their immediate satisfaction for a better future. And that's the problem today as it was 50 years ago.

Randers supported his opinion with the example of Norway, the country where he comes from. He said that he and other scientists had prepared a plan that would have zeroed the country's emission by 2050 at a cost of some Eur 200 per person per year for 50 years. It was refused at all levels. The rich and well-educated people of Norway prefer to have an extra 200 Eurs to spend shopping in London rather than give an example of good management of the ecosystem to the world.

Randers's talk arose some strong reactions in the audience, some quite unfavorable. But, really, it made a sorely needed point: we are still reasoning as we were reasoning 50 years ago. We are creating environmental activists who are supposed to push people and governments to do something good for the environment. It doesn't seem to work. Not well enough for what we need to do, at least. And the batch of young activists being prepared at the summer school may face a task that will turn out to be even more difficult than it was for the previous generation.

So, what to do? Difficult to say, but at least asking the right questions is a good starting point

Testing the MEDEAS world model during the Summer School of the Club of Rome in Florence

The Summer School of the Club of Rome in Florence. Above: one of discussion groups engaged in proposing parameters to be run with the MEDEAS world model. In the back, standing, Ilaria Perissi (researcher at the University of Florence) and Jordi Sole (Coordinator of the MEDEAS project). 

A Comment by Gianni Comoretto


42 years ago, when I was 16, I read “The Limits of growth” and it changed my life. I was already worried about things like pollution and overpopulation, but I did not suspect the entity of these problems. I was fascinated by these models, by the possibility to at least have hints of the future we were approaching. I learned programming and I was even able to put the simplest models in a programmable hand-held calculator (a Texas SR52), and some years later on an AppleII. I began to tackle more seriously the problems of an exponential growth in a finite world, sustainable development, renewable energies, energy efficiency…

Therefore when I heard that the Club of Rome was organizing a summer academy in my city, I subscribed enthusiastically. Even after 42 years of activism and study, I have plenty of things to learn. And I met about a hundred of wonderful persons down all over the world. Some I know from a long time, some were for me just names on the front pages of books and papers I read. Most of them much younger than me. Saturday we were presented a new, much improved model of the world resources, society and economy, developed as part of a European framework program. It is much more detailed than the original one, but the basic results are quite similar, and equally gloomy than those of 45 years ago: in the “business as usual” scenario the global economy will still be able to grow for a few years, slowing down until, in 15-20 years, it will begin to collapse very quickly, leaving little behind. 

But this is a school, and the best way to learn is trying. So we divided into 3 groups, and each one had to decide which measures were necessary to guarantee at least a minimum of energy and services for everybody. We settle to 30-40 gigajoule per person per year (about 1 kW of average power use). Of the three groups mine was the only one to be able to guarantee this level at least up the end of the century, basically by adopting: an immediate “controlled recession” of 1% per year a decrease in the global population at a rate of 0.5% per year, that we considered feasible just preventing unwanted pregnancy and increasing women education an increase of 22.5% per year of the installed renewable energy capabilities measures to control the financial market, to reduce inequalities massive reforestation 

Other groups were less aggressive, both in the PIL decrease and in the necessity of installing renewable energies. As a result, their economy stayed significantly higher than ours for a couple of decades, but collapsed only a bit later than in the “business as usual” model. Our controlled recession strategy gave us more time to implement renewables, that in the end saved the day to our slightly reduced population. This lesson taught us lots of things. First, even among people dedicated to these problems, it is not easy to understand what is really necessary. Renewables are not a luxury, and we have not much time to implement them. Last but not least, we will never win the next elections with our program.

Below, Sara Falsini, researcher at the University of Florence (white shirt, standing), engaged with another group of testers of the MEDEAS model.