I presented parts of these findings in my doctoral thesis about the political history of biofuels in the European Union 2012. The Club of Rome’s tentacles were everywhere, including in the European Parliament.¹³ They even had a foothold at my university.
During my examination it became obvious that one Club of Rome member, a rapporteur for the Renewable Energy Directive, was working to insert the Club of Rome’s agenda into European Union legislation, and not for the polices of the party he represented. It was, however, not appreciated that I uncovered his connections to powerful international networks and actors. Someone sent him a copy of my thesis, after which he decided to intervene by trying to influence the grading committee’s judgement of my thesis. His efforts were unsuccessful but it gave me an unpleasant experience.
He had actually been awarded an honorary doctorate at my university in 2011 and had for some years been involved in energy related courses at my institution. This enabled me to conduct a recorded interview with him in the fall of 2010.¹⁴ Two months before my dissertation defense in December 2012, he had also been appointed as the president of Club of Rome. His connections made it possible for him to pull some strings in order to try to destroy my reputation and undermine my career.
Some colleagues stopped talking to me and the climate suddenly became very chilly at my institution. Half of my department was outraged. The press department didn’t publish any press release as customary, as they deemed the dissertation “too controversial”, and my former supervisor made a public declaration that he would never have approved a thesis like mine. One of the press officers, a Greenpeace activist, wrote on her blog (widely read by environmental science students) that she was ashamed that the university had let my thesis pass.
Their combined efforts did, however, backfire as the interest in my work instead skyrocketed.
One year after my thesis was approved, the book Domedagsklockan was released with a chapter authored by me about the climate agenda and Club of Rome.¹⁵ It was widely distributed to editorial boards in Sweden and we even managed to get an opinion piece published in Sweden’s leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter, with a reference to my doctoral thesis Ordo ab Chao.¹⁶ They got even angrier this time…
(I describe this in my autobiographical An Inconvenient Journey, which will be available as an e-book soon).