Oltmans, W., On Growth

W. Oltmans - On Growth

This symposium about Limits to Growth is the result of a switch in journalistic interest. After having covered foreign affairs and international relations for twenty years, I discovered late in 1970 the Club of Rome. In those days I was representing NOS National Dutch Television in the United States. I had learned that the US and USSR were conducting semisecret negotiations about the creation of an institute for systems analysis. I contacted McGeorge Bundy, the onetime Henry Kissinger of President John F. Kennedy, who was rumored to lead the discussions with the Soviets. He introduced me, however, to Dr. Philip Handler, President of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., who had taken over these sensitive pourparlers. It was Dr. Handler who informed me about the work at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology of Professor Jay W. Forrester. Here I learned about the existence of the Club of Rome and its assignment to Forrester'ssystem engineers at MIT2 to study with computer models the limits of the planet as a whole. Early in 1971, I began producing a documentary film on the information I obtained in Washington for NOS National Dutch Television. I included conversations with Dr. Handler (in Washington, D.C.), Professor Forrester (in Cambridge, Massachusetts), Dr. Aurelio Peccei (in Rome, who is founder and chairman of the Club of Rome) and Dr. Djhermen M. Gvishiani (in Moscow, who is vice-chairman of the state committee of the USSR Council of Ministersfor Science and Technology and corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences). My film wasshown September 26, 1971, in prime time on Sunday night, and apart from being a world premiere, it caused a major sensation.