Eirv08n25-19810623 018-Club of Rome Founder Alexander K
Eirv08n25-19810623 018-Club of Rome Founder Alexander K
Eirv08n25-19810623 018-Club of Rome Founder Alexander K
Exclusive Interview
The following interview with Dr. Alexander King. founder EIR: Could you give us some p icture of how this idea
of the Club of Rome. was conducted May 26 in Paris by arose-as yo u put it, in m an y places at the same time?
EI R's Laurent Murawiec and Dino di Paoli. King : I think thi s i s somet hing that has h a ppened over
and over agai n s ince the begin n i ng of M a n ' s history.
EIR: When the U nited States la unched the Sp ace Sh ut Sometimes, the same thing has been invented in th ree or
tle, there was a groundswell of public support for science, four d i fferent places s i m u l taneously. It h appens because
tech no logy and related m atter s . In your m i n d , Dr. King, people are working in the same direction in m any pl aces,
does this i m p ly a backlash aga i nst the kin d of influence and all the background, all the environmental p repara
on public op i n i o n represented by, for example, the 1 966 tions h ave been m ade-it j ust comes out l i ke that. It i s
report by Anatol R apoport of the Tavistock I nstitute? very c o m m o n , a n d I think we will s e e more o f this. I t also
He analyzed the effects of science and tech no logy o n happens in p ublic opinion . In 1 968, when we h ad the
America n society i n light o f t h e N A S A m o o n-shot effort, student troubles h ere in France, it happened sim ultane
and reported too much respect for science among the ously everywhere else. And the anti-pollution lobbies,
population, recommending a counter-effort. the conservationists coming o ut and i nfluencing govern
King : Well, public opinion is a very labile thing; i t m ents for the first time-all this happened simultaneous
changes very easil y . Si nce 1 968, there has been a gradual ly in many p laces .
demystifi cation of science, and an i ncreasing resistance I n fact, som e governments have been working on this
to new technology. This, of course, i s the sort of thing fo r nearly a h u n d red years . The public had n ot reacted.
that goes up and down . Science occasi onally h as some But then, new i nventi ons, a n d new ideas o ften make their
big brea kthroughs, like the first man on the M o o n , and appearance in h i sto ry with m o vements which are some
then it becomes popular. B ut then, the pen dulum swi ngs times very complicated , but which manifest themselves
the other way. in m any p l aces at the same tim e . That is standard.
The Space Sh uttle i s typical . At the moment, people
are relatively pleased with that k i n d o f thing. But some- . EIR: In other words, fo r the idea we are d iscussing here,
th ing else will happen , and public opinion will go the you m ean to i n d icate that, for example, A urelio Peccei
other way . . . . was off working on his own; you were working on your
own , and so fo rth?
EIR: I mentioned Rapoport's report because i t seems to King : Yes, I h ave been here in Paris for about 20 years.
have had a n enorm o u s i m p act on future thinking about I was a d irecto r-general o f the O E C D and then general
science and techn ology. After the report, NASA sta rted secretary . Even the n , a Danish economist, Thorkil Kris
to be scaled back, for exam ple. M uch work l ater done ten sen , and I talked over this many times.
res ulted from its co nclusions, that there was an excess o f The Club o f Rome originated i n a feeling that growth
scien ce in society . for growth 's sake was not good enough . None o f us in
King : I doubt if that report as such h as had as m uc h the Club o f Rome h ave ever been against economic
i n fluence as yo u s ay . Nonetheless, it was a very good growth . We have been i dentified with zero-growth, true,
report, the culmi nation of a movement of thought occur but we h a ve never been for it. Anecdotally , I can tell you
ring in many p l aces at the same time. M any people had about that.
the same do ubts about science and techn o l ogy that Ra In the period when this was happening, Thorkil
poport expressed. K ri stensen wrote a p aper for the Council of M i ni sters of
© 1981 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited.
the O EC D on the problems o f contemporary society. tional programs. We invented the whole question of
The ministers discussed it-before the evencmcnls [stu curriculum reform, trying to teach mathematics and
dent and labor strikes o f May 1968 in Paris-ed. ]. What chemistry, etc. in new ways. We were the only body that
was discussed was the question o f educational unrest, the began to look at education in terms of its economic
question o f the need for deep educational re form to make impact. We were very much criticized for this. The
young people much more atuned to what was happening, ministries of education were all culturally based. E duca
much more in tune with societal realities. The discussions tion was something that passed down the riches of pos
raised the question of environmental destruction, the terity to new generations, in their view. To tie education
question o f alienation o f the individual, rejection of to the economic wagon seemed terrible. But they exag
authority and many other things of that kind. They all gerated and misconstrued our purpose, as always.
came up at the same time. What we were trying to do was to examine the
Kristensen and I felt that governments, although educational system in relation to the economy-it is a
willing to debate these things, were not capable of acting very big relationship. You have to look at education in
quickly enough or responsively enough to these changes. terms of the needs of the future economy and the kinds
The bureaucracies of governments, even more than the of jobs that are going to be required. What kind of
ministers, are post facto mechanisms. They only react training is required, intellectually as well as in the or di
after events, and do not foresee them. They are not nary sense of socialization.
prepared for them.
It was at that time that Kristensen and I got in touch EIR: Were you involved in the project to transform the
with Aurelio Peccei. The Club o f Rome was actually born way mathematics is taught, the so-called New Math?
inside the 0 EC D, around such concerns. King: Yes, yes, yes. We pioneered it, very much so! At
that time, under Kristensen, the OECD was a very
EIR: Did the O EC D do any work on this educational innovative place. I was in charge of science and technol
question prior to the Paris h'cncmen!s? ogy, and education, and we had our internal policies.
King: Yes, quite a lot. We were very interested in educa- Our policy was roughly that we should be at least five
years ahead of the thinking of the nation-states; second,
however, we should never appear to be more than t wo
years ahead. Otherwise, we would be killed!
Our policy was to look at everything that is new, at
Alexander King: a speculative matters, matters of uncertainty. We had
subverter of science many failures, but then again, when we were successful,
and the nation-states would get interested, we had com
pleted our catalytic role. We would drop those activities
Dr. Alexander King, C BE (Commander of the
and begin new ones. It was a very mobile an d very
British Empire) and CMG (Comman der of the
interesting approach.
Order of St. Michael and St. George), has taught
When we started the curriculum reform, a number of
chemistry at the Imperial College, London and
people, particularly in America, at M I T, were very inter
headed the British Scientific Mission in Washing
ested. We found a number of French mathematics teach
ton from 1943 to 1947. Beginning in 1 968, he was
ers terribly interested. We also found people in Germany
director general for the Scienti fic Affairs Section of
and the United Kingdom, too.
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
After about three years, we had national commisions
Development ( OE CD), an apparatus considered a
for curriculum reform on various subjects in all member
subordinate feature of N AT O, but actually its pol
nations. At that point, we decided we had done enough
icy controller.
of that, and we dropped it. The ministers [of the member
Dr. King also heads the International Federa
nations ] thought we were crazy! The thing was success
tion of Institutes for Advanced Studies, the coor
ful, so why were we stopping it? But we had catalyze d it,
dinating body for seven such institutes, with mem
and that is all we intended. By the time we finished, there
bership heavily overlapping the Club o f Rome.The
was an economic section in the ministries of education in
International Federation of Institutes for Ad
every nation-state in the OECD.
vanced Studies is based in Stockholm, Sweden and
Paris, France and has close ties to the Tavistock
EIR: Who headed the economic section in France?
Institute, the Sussex-based flagship institution of
King: Ah, well, France was not very keen on this....
British intelligence's psychological warfare divi
The primary work was done in the United States....We
sion.
were in on all kinds of colloquia connecte d to this. A
number of Frenchmen were very keen on this. . . . Ber-
tor, U.N. Con fe ren ce on Sc ienc e and Technology for . Dan Tolkowsky, managing director, Discount
Development, New York, U.S.A. Bank Investment Co., Ltd., Tel Aviv, Israel.
Sol M. Linowitz, former president, Xerox Corp.; Victor L. Urquidi, president, College of Mexico.
attorney, Washington, D.C. Carroll L. Wilson, direc to r, World Coal Study,
Elizabeth Mann-Borghese, professor of political Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A.
science, Dalhousie U niver s it y Halifax, Nova Scotia;
, Ibrahim Helmi Abdel Rahman, adviser to the prime
founder, Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, As minister, Cairo, Egypt .
pen, Colorado, U.S.A. chairman, Board of Direc
Yoshishige Ashihara,
D. Jose Antonio Mayobre, Central Bank of Ven.e- tors, Kansai El ec t ric
Power Co., Japan.
zuela, Caracas, Venezuela. Jeremy Bray, member of parliament, House of
Saburo Okita, foreign minister, Japan. Commons, Great Britain.
JozefPajestka, Planning Commission, Poland. Felipe Herrera. pr es ide nt Spanish Bank-Chile,
,
Eduard Pestel, minister for arts and sciences, State Center for Theoretical Physics. Trieste, I tal y .
of Lower Saxony, West Germany. Professor Roberto Vacca. author, The Coming
Edgar Pisani, European Community commission Dark Age, Rome, Italy.
er for relations to developing sector, France. Thorkil Kristensen, former aide to the director
lIya Prigogine, professor of science, Free Univer gener al for scientific affairs, OECD, Brussels, Bel
sity of Brussels, Belgium. gium.
Kazimierz Secomski, vice-presiden t of the Council Maurice Guernier, author, The Last Chance/or the
of Ministers, Poland. Third World(1968), Paris, France.
Dr. Soedjatmoko, National Development Plan Jean Saint-Genurs, vice-president, Internatioal As
ning Agency, Indonesia. sociation of Futuribles, Paris, France.
things before the end of the cent ury. B u t there are many options are , where they lead to, and how m uch latitude
.
things you can do to make people more aware. I n the you have .
International Federation we are doing something with In a secon d ph ase this could give data fo r persuading
Unesco on this. the people that it is in their own interest to have fewer
I'm also deeply involved in the United Nations De children . It is in their own i nterest .
partment on Pop ulation in New Y ork , as chairman o f a
panel of advi sers on their long-term programs looking at EIR: Do you rej ect t h e " h ard-line" policy, in t h e sense
the q uestion of the "carrying capacity" of the nation that we apply a " let t hem die" policy to the Third World
states, not in a M a lthusian way, but in a dynamic way, i f we cannot give them the necessa ry inputs of food and
where good policies can increa se their "carrying capaci so on?
ty . " Bad policies, as in many A frican countries, eating King: In places like B angl adesh and Africa there will be
up their resource base, will limit them . In order that a big crisis. B ut I am not a person of extremes . I think
countries may have methods of knowing what their that nature will d o a great deal . B u t the extent of the
situation really is, there are m any things one can do, b ut tragedies is going to be enorm ous . I have seen forecasts
you have got to take these things seri ously, to get the for B angladesh from their own demographers o f possi
remedial things started. bilities o f as many as 1 2 m illion people dying in a year.
Twelve millio n ! Remember, in the B angladesh war, de
EIR: That is what the RAPI D program of the State spite all the m i litary cas u a lties , all the cholera casua lties,
Department Office o f Pop ulation Affairs is doing, as you all the people who died o f m a l n utrition, and so on, the
have been informed, I am sure . loss of population was made u p i n three weeks by the
King: Yes . Y o u see, the ignorance on this is terrific. I natural process. S o the extent of this can be enormous.
remember j ust a couple of years ago we were having a Apart from that, there will be a backlash in many
talk with Leopold Senghor, the [fo rmer] president o f other ways . Take the q uestion of the M exicans in the
Senegal, a n d h e said, " M y country i s vastly u nderpopu U nited States already, how many millions we don 't
lated . I n Belgi um you have 74 perso ns to the square know. Years ago in Bangk o k , I was talking with people
ki lometer, here we have 2 '/2 " without realizing in a from some A S EAN [Association o f So utheast Asian
'
distinctive way that the nat ure of his country is utterly Nations] countries . Attitudes were very interesting.
differen t . A lmost all o f the country is desert , i t does not Among other things, they were sayi ng, "In the sixties,
support people . This k i n d o f crude thing comes up even we flirted with the Russians; now we know the nature of
on the part of people who should know better . B u t the beast, and we realize it is an im perialism worse than
through Unesco we a r e starting a n um ber o f studies o n anything we have known . " But they were saying that we
what t h e carrying capacity c o u l d b e i n m a n y countries, are j ust at the beginning o f the new tide of great m igra
like Keyna, setting an opti m u m at what the various tions, there will be mi llions o f people on the move to the