Chapter 7: Co-Construction of Global Problematiques

The original prospectus of the Club of Rome (CoR) on the Predicament of Mankind included a set of forty-nine Continuous Critical Problems (CCPs). This set of CCPs, on account of their strong interactions over time, have created a new entity, identified as the Global Problematique. This chapter employs the virtual mode of the Logosofia platform, to perform a “Gedanken-experiment.” A multinational group of SDD practitioners and advocates, spread geographically, were employed, in the co-construction of two Problematiques corresponding to the global climate crisis, namely: (a) a Retrospective Problematique, co-constructed by the group by means of abductive reasoning retrospectively, i.e., “what would have happened during the last fifty years (1970–2020), if certain CCP’s had been ameliorated,” and (b) a Retroductive Problematique, co-constructed by the group by means of normative retroductive reasoning, i.e., “what should happen in the next thirty years (2020–2050), by the amelioration of certain CCPs in the short term.” The lessons learned from the co-construction of these two Global Problematiques are interpreted and compared. From the diagnosis emerging from the root source of the Retroductive Problematique, plausible corrective policy/actions are proposed for the amelioration of the climate crisis by the year 2050.