Forty years ago the Club of Rome’s report Limits to Growth drew world attention to the imperative to bring the human species into “system equilibrium” with nature. That report sparked a heated global debate about economic growth on a finite planet.

The Club of Rome projected dire consequences if we failed to act. We have indeed failed to act and environmental collapse is playing out much as the Club of Rome predicted. The collapse, however, is not the center of public debate, which centers instead on financial deficits, gas prices, and how best to stimulate even more economic growth.

The biosphere is an exquisitely complex global system of countless individual living organisms that self-organize locally everywhere as resilient, constantly evolving communities. This gives the biosphere an extraordinary capacity to adapt to conditions in each locality, optimize the capture and use of nutrients, energy, and water in support of life, and function in sustained dynamic local and global equilibrium.

The contrast between the system model of the biosphere and that of the global economy could hardly be greater. The global economy is controlled by a few hundred global banks and corporations that lack roots in any locality and are devoted to maximizing financial gain. Lacking the self-corrective feedback mechanisms required to achieve and maintain equilibrium with the biosphere, these institutions drive us toward environmental collapse, economic inequality, social breakdown, and political corruption. Until the institutional structure of the economy is reconfigured, the system will continue to drive us to these same disastrous outcomes.

Our common future depends on replacing this failed economic system with one that mimics the structure and dynamics of the biosphere and allocates the biosphere’s human share equitably to meet the needs of everyone.

Tragically, the clash between human and natural systems receives little public attention. The status quo serves powerful global corporate interests that control mass media, education, and the political discourse. They use that control to dampen critical voices. Yet the necessary policy action will come only when demanded by the public and that demand can only be generated by sufficient public awareness of the issues and options.

Many think tanks and advocacy groups demand action on specific environmental and social issues. The world, however, needs a group able to focus public attention on the deep system restructuring required to bring the human species into balance with the biosphere.

In 1972 the Club of Rome spoke with a powerful prophetic voice that challenged prevailing economic theories and corporate interests, cut through the establishment media filter, and for a time drew world attention to the defining system issue of our time. As the projected environmental collapse proceeds, the CoR must use its stature to become that prophetic voice once again.

* David Korten ^[2] (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, the Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group ^[3], a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies ^[4] and a member of the Club of Rome ^[5].