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Such moves would obviously substitute international planning for the workings of the free market. The Club aims to help that planning with a computer model, developed by Edouard Pestel, professor of engineering at West Germany's Hannover University and Mihajlo Mesarovic, director of the Systems Research Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Concentrating on ten separate world regions, the model is fed data—population growth, food production, climate changes, energy supplies, etc.—that can permit economists to test scenarios for various situations. West Germany, for instance, is already using the model to find out how to transfer some industrial production to less-developed countries without harming its own economy.
Will people actually go along with such changes in growth patterns? The Club's third effort, a sociological investigation of human goals, optimistically indicates as much. Explains Philosopher Ervin Laszlo, now working at the U.N.'s Institute for Training and Research: "The materialistic growth ethic is not an immutable expression of human nature." Beyond this possibility of altruism, however, the Club of Rome holds out the motivation of simple self-interest. If nations do not act to equalize resources, Club members warned in Philadelphia, mankind will rush lemming-like to the disasters so well publicized by Limits to Growth.