Whose Limits to Growth. Novelty and Ambiguity of the 1972 Report to the Club of Rome

This article, which originates from a conference held in Tokyo in 2022, reviews the existing literature on the Limits to Growth report and on the organization, the Club of Rome, that commissioned it. It then focuses on its short-lived (and never uncontested) positive reception, especially in Western Europe, and on some of the long-lasting criticisms immediately levelled against it. The concluding remarks highlight the ambivalent nature of the report that secured its enduring legacy to this day. While it reflected the worldview of Western elites and of transnational capitalist networks seeking non-revolutionary ways to deal with the internal and international crisis of the late 1960s. at the same time its core argument of «limits to growth» struck at the heart of the capitalist model and practice in the 20th century, which was (and still is) predicated upon an endlessly increasing production of goods and services, and upon bypassing the need to deal with the physical limits to the exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources.