JEREMY RIFKIN
CONTENTS
The Green New Deal
Dick’s general
introduction.
Dick’s summaries of the
Introduction and chapters one and two.
Publisher’s summary.
An Excerpt.
Reviews.
About the author.
Google Search
The Third Industrial
Revolution
His other books.
THE GREEN NEW
DEAL
DICK’S General
Introduction.
Although this book is about the familiar subject of resilience in adapting to the climate
emergency, it is far from familiar in scope
in most other ways, which is a major reason why it kept my attention page after
page.
In any textbook on
rhetoric and argumentation, establishment of the speaker’s authority is usually
near the front of persuasive techniques. Pull a climate book off your shelf and
glance at the endorsers. And then look
at Rifkin’s: the Director of the largest
energy consulting team in the industry; the co-chair of the Global Covenant of
Mayors for Climate; the former President of Doctors Without Borders; the
Principal of the number one architecture firm in the US as ranked by
Architecture magazine; Vandana Shiva, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award.
They like the
scope and boldness-and persuasiveness--of his plan.
The scope and
boldness: the collapse of the FF civilization, the rebuilding of the planet’s
infrastructure, zero carbon living, free sun and wind.
The persuasiveness:
well, that depends upon our judgment during a close reading,
but I found his exposition of the European Climate Vision to
be what has been missing in the USA, ironically in a book declared to be about
the USA’s new New Deal. He has used our
pre-World War II Dust Bowl and Depression and the transformative but truncated
national project of the Democrats’ New Deal as the foundation for the new ND’s
realization in post-WWII European national experiences. It’s a complex story of course; he offers no
simple magical solutions, only clear thinking and hard work.
For example,
chapter 1, p. 29, “in the European Union [of the 21st century], EU
citizens recognize the importance of maintaining a balanced partnership between
government and commerce, and there is a deep appreciation for the role that the
government plays in providing public infrastructure and services. . . . By contrast, everywhere we look across
America today, the public infrastructure is in dire straits and disrepair,” to
which the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a report card of D+. (Here’s an example from Arkansas: Emily
Walkenhorst, “High-risk dams in rough shape….” (NADG, 11-18-19). Or this
nation-wide: Ellen Knickmeyer, “Report: 60% of Superfund sites at higher risk
in climate change.” (11-19). Who do you think is readier for the climate
emergency, Europe or the US?)
And how will we
pay to catch up our infrastructure in order to be resilient when the
hyper-storms and -floods and -fires and -droughts strike? That’s all laid out too by Rifkin in
“Finding the Money” (182- and passim).
This is a
brilliant, comprehensive, necessary book for the emergency, and I urge all CBF
members to read it.
Dick
Jeremy Rifkin. The
Green New Deal: Why
the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan
to Save Life on Earth. St.
Martin's Press, 2019.
Dick’s
summary and comments on the Intro. and chapters 1 and 2.
ORGANIZATION
Part
I. “The Great Disruption: The Decoupling
Stampede and Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets”
In
four chapters: the ferocious effort of corporate investors to extract every
drop of FF before that trillions of dollars of profit is shut off and the new
economy of free sun and wind arrives and empowers the people.
Part
II. “A Green New Deal Rising from the
Ashes.”
In
three chapters: the new “social capitalism,” a cooperative society of the
people creating a new democratic civilization.
INTRODUCTION
(Notes on pp.247-).
This
thoroughly political book opens with 2018’s wakeup calls: 1) The IPCC’s October “dire warning of
“accelerating emissions” and “escalating climatic events, imperiling life on
the planet.” To avoid that chaos, we
must “cut the emission of global warming gases 45 percent from 2010 levels” in
only 12 years. 2) The Nov. 2018 election
of a younger generation of Democrats who understood the warning and were
“committed to a radical redirection of the American economy” to a more
equitable distribution of its fruits. By
Feb. 2019 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with Senator Ed Markey had introduced a
Green New Deal Resolution. Quickly over
100 members of Congress cosponsored it, including several presidential
contenders, and hundreds of state and local officials.
This “turnaround in the national mood”
followed a decade of disastrous water events indicating a “disruption of the
Earth’s hydrosphere.” Climate change and
the GND were moving to the center of the 2020 electoral campaign. 91% of Democrats supported the Resolution,
88% of Independents, and 64% of Republicans (pp. 5-6). Elite representatives were also joining the
movement, especially in support of a carbon tax. And a similar GND “swept across the European
Union.” (6-7).
Meanwhile, “solar, wind, and other
renewable energies are coming online.”
The cost for solar and wind installation has “plummeted” until they are
now “’cheaper than the most efficient gas plants, coal plants, and nuclear
reactors.” (7). Here Rifkin introduces
what becomes a major topic of the book: the move from FF to cheaper renewables
will create trillions of dollars worth of FF “stranded assets,” creating a “seismic struggle” as the “principal
sectors responsible for global warming” begin “to decouple from the fossil fuel
industry.” (8).
Rifkin calls this energy change the “Great
Disruption,” and it is part of the “Third Industrial Revolution” (TIR) of
divestment from FF and embrace of renewables.
Of great concern to millions of US workers is the safe transition of over $40 trillion
invested in pension funds. This will be
“the biggest divest/invest campaign in capitalist history” (9).
Unfortunately, the US has no plan for the
transition to a zero-carbon future.
Europe and China, however, are preparing, which Rifkin has
assisted. This book on the GND is
intended to help the US catch up (10).
He is confident that the global companies and the governments of the EU
and China ”that I work with” can do it, and that the US will join them.
CHAPTER
ONE: IT’S THE INFRASTRUCTURE, STUPID! (Notes pp. 249-251) [From the First
Industrial Revolution to the Third]
[We think in trinities or triads? Rifkin does.]
We need a new economic vision and fast,
for we need to transform simultaneously all three parts of our interactive infrastructure:
1) communication, 2) transportation, 3) energy, and we have only 20 years to accomplish
it [to others, 10 years].
This total paradigm revolution can be
understood historically as three economic revolutions, which Rifkin compares not
in chronological order, but the First and Second are woven into his narrative
of the Third.
The new economic system, the Third
Industrial Revolution, will change everything [remember Klein’s book]
“comparable to the shift from agriculture to an industrial society,” creating
“new business models. . .new kinds of mass employment,” training “millions of
people.”
The digitized Communication Internet is
converging with digitized Mobility/ Logistics Internet powered by a Renewable
Energy Internet “atop an Internet of things (IoT) platform embedded in the
total infrastructure (pp. 15-16).
[Rifkin thinks BIG and the FUTURE.
See pp. 24]
The rest of the chapter takes up topic
after topic of the shift from the Second
Industrial Revolution into the “smart” zero-carbon, Third Industrial Revolution
economy and infrastructure that are “the very center-piece of a Green New Deal” (23).
This new economy’s infrastructure must be
enormous to accomplish such scope of planetary changes. “Big Data,” available to all free, will
increase efficiency and productivity, reduce carbon footprint, and lower
marginal cost, “forcing a fundamental change in the capitalist system” (17). “This is what the green digital Third Industrial Revolution does.”
(18). And since it is universally
embedded, it will be a “sharing economy” composed of “sharing networks” using
dramatically less natural resources and causing significantly less carbon emissions. “The Sharing Economy is a core feature of the
Green New Deal era” (19).
The GND’s roots in the 2nd IR
of the Roosevelts and the Democratic Party is announced by its name, and such
roots go far back into the 1st IR via the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of
1862 and 1890 (32-33).
But
those infrastructures were flawed by their economic and social inequities
(34). The GND envisions a democratic
future, governments in partnership with the public. Power including economic power must be “glocalized,”
or decentralized to regions, states, counties, and cities, and to “peer-assemblies” (35-6, 42-45). “Deep public participation” should be the
rule in this laterally scaled 3rd IR in which the infrastructure is
perceived as public open-source commons.
Why has the national infrastructure been
so neglected in recent decades? Why have
we delayed? Why are we so far behind
Europe? Despite the countless ways government (i.e.
public) money has built the infrastructure of this country, the evidence that
increasing infrastructure spending increases jobs and GDP, and the popularity
of infrastructures, well-funded Republican anti-government, pro-private and
corporate ideology has been gaining power ever since Ronald Reagan (28-31, 36-7).
[In the preceding summary, I
mainly assumed the voice of the author.
In the following, I speak as clearly another person telling about the
chapter. –D]
CHAPTER 2: POWER TO THE PEOPLE: THE SUN AND WIND ARE FREE
Jeremy Rifkin has extraordinary knowledge
of the history of the “Green New Deal.”
He is the first historian of the movement that I know of to identify its
roots in 2007 Europe. By then Europe had
become the leader in decarbonizing societies.
In 2007 the European Union
(EU) established the 20-20-20 protocols requiring all EU member states to
increase their energy efficiency by 20%, reduce their global warming emissions
by 20%, and increase their generation of renewable energies by 20% by the year 2020. Thus it was “the first major political power
to establish a…legally binding commitment to….transform the continent into a
zero-carbon society” (47). [Did they
meet their deadline?]
Almost simultaneously the Green New Deal
movement began. The eclectic Green New
Deal Group met in the UK “to rethink the economic paradigm.” And in 2008
they published a 48-page declaration titled A
Green New Deal: Joined-Up Policies to Solve the Triple Crunch of the Credit
Crisis, Climate Change, and High Oil Prices.”
Central to the document was the 20-20-20- formula. It inaugurated the zero-carbon Third Industrial Revolution paradigm shift (the
First in the nineteenth century: coal, steam, telegraph; the Second in the twentieth:
oil, electricity, telephone): renewables,
digital infrastructure (see chapter 1).
The document’s title was no
accident. The group chose President
Roosevelt’s New Deal as the inspiration for transforming the European economy
into green (48).
One year later the German Green Party
issued a manifesto titled Toward a
Transatlantic Green New Deal: Tackling the Climate and Economic Crises. They hoped to unite the US and EU to
advance a postcarbon transition.
Later the same year the European Greens
published a detailed plan called A Green
New Deal for Europe: Towards Green Modernisation in the Face of Crisis. And the United Nation’s Environment
Programme (UNEP) issued its report, Rethinking
the Economic Recovery: Global Green New Deal.
2008 was a great leap forward for GND.
Next year S. Korea signed a $36 billion
initiative for low-carbon projects and 900,000 new jobs.
And in 2011, Rifkin co-authored a book
titled A Green New Deal: From
Geo-politics to Biosphere Politics, focusing on architecture and infrastructure
(49).
The Green New Deal “continued to gain
momentum” and became “a theme in the 2019 European elections.”
Meanwhile, in the US, GND “became the
moniker for the US Green Party and the presidential run of Jill Stein in
2016.” And in 2018 the new sunrise Movement and US Representative Ocasio-Cortez
[with Senator Markey] made their own declaration. (Discussed earlier p. 3, e.g.
103 members of Congress, several Democratic Party presidential contenders, and hundreds of state and local officials had
cosponsored it by 2019).
To sum up, the GND had been prepared for a
decade before coming to fruition via the new millennial and Gen Z political
revolution. [See chapter 1 on earlier
preparation during 1st and 2nd IR.]
This historical sketch constitutes the
first half of chapter 2 (to p. 50). The second
half is even more important.
Rifkin perceives the transition, the
“paradigm shift,” to the Third Industrial Revolution and GND (and Paris Climate
Summit) as occurring in “four sectors that make up the Second Industrial
Revolution infrastructure” (see p. 16 ): ICT/telecommunications; energy and
electricity; internal combustion mobility; residential, commercial, etc.
buildings. Here is the battleground
emphatically from 2015 onward of the
four sectors decoupling from the fossil fuel civilization and recoupling with
green energies and technologies, and “leaving
stranded [100 trillions of dollars of] fossil fuels assets everywhere (my
italics) (50). [Here’s why the question
--why can’t people just get along?-- is so foolish, and why the ff companies and
their investors are drilling and selling with such frenzy.] Add to fear of an international binding
commitment to limit global warming by 2 degrees at the Paris Summit, CEOs and
investors also feared the rapidly “falling cost of …green power and storage,” which would leave trillions of dollars of
potential ff profits abandoned (52).
The remaining pages of the chapter gives
some details; and the rest of the book is closely tied to it. I’ll single one out that highlights his
important role in this history. One of
Rifkin’s books is The Third Industrial
Revolution. In 2012 China’s Premier Li
Keqiang read the book and instructed high-level national centers to follow up
its ideas (65).
An important factor unrevealed by my
selection of highlights is Rifkin’s long and deep leadership in the GND
movement. The main theme underlying this
history is that mitigating warming requires a comprehensive, international
political movement. He is one of the original thinkers and a steady promoter of
the concept during the last decade. This
book can be read as an autobiography of his promotion of GND.
The first two chapters suggest that the great Resolution by Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey did not spring out of nowhere, but is as much a culmination as it is a beginning.
The first two chapters suggest that the great Resolution by Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Markey did not spring out of nowhere, but is as much a culmination as it is a beginning.
My summaries and comments on chapters
one and two were intended to help us compare the book with other GND narratives
. In a critical review, I would have examined
for example Rifkin’s under-attention to population growth (zero citations) and
to Bernie Sanders (one).
THE GREEN NEW DEAL: Why the Fossil Fuel
Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on
Earth by Jeremy
Rifkin. St. Martin's Press, 2019.
$14.99
256
Pages
An urgent plan to confront climate change, transform the
American economy, and create a green post-fossil fuel culture.
A
new vision for America’s future is quickly gaining momentum. Facing a global
emergency, a younger generation is spearheading a national conversation around
a Green New Deal and setting the agenda for a bold political movement with the
potential to revolutionize society. Millennials, the largest voting bloc in the
country, are now leading on the issue of climate change.
While
the Green New Deal has become a lightning rod in the political sphere, there is
a parallel movement emerging within the business community that will shake the
very foundation of the global economy in coming years. Key sectors of the
economy are fast-decoupling from fossil fuels in favor of ever cheaper solar
and wind energies and the new business opportunities and employment that
accompany them. New studies are sounding the alarm that trillions of dollars in
stranded fossil fuel assets could create a carbon bubble likely to burst by
2028, causing the collapse of the fossil fuel civilization. The marketplace is
speaking, and governments will need to adapt if they are to survive and
prosper.
In The
Green New Deal, New York Times bestselling author and
renowned economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin delivers the political narrative and
economic plan for the Green New Deal that we need at this critical moment in
history. The concurrence of a stranded fossil fuel assets bubble and a green
political vision opens up the possibility of a massive shift to a post-carbon
ecological era, in time to prevent a temperature rise that will tip us over the
edge into runaway climate change. With twenty-five years of experience
implementing Green New Deal–style transitions for both the European Union and
the People’s Republic of China, Rifkin offers his vision for how to transform
the global economy and save life on Earth.
EXCERPT
INTRODUCTION
We are facing a global
emergency. Our scientists tell us that human-induced climate change
brought on by the burning of fossil fuels has taken the human race and our
fellow species into the sixth mass extinction...
REVIEWS
Praise for The Green New Deal
"[Jeremy Rifkin] is a
principal architect of the European Union’s long-term economic vision, Smart
Europe, and a key advisor to China's Third Industrial Revolution vision...The
European Commission is calling for a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. His new
book, The Green New Deal, is essentially an attempt to rouse the
United States from its slumber within a collapsing 20th century fossil fuel
era." —Forbes
“The futurist and prolific
author is the kind of thinker popular among chief executives and the TED Talk
crowd. So it’s not surprising that ‘The Green New Deal’ takes a stance quite
different from that of typical Green New Deal supporters... he’s interested in
building factories, farms, and vehicles in a fossil-free world, asserting that
‘the Green New Deal is all about infrastructure.’ He’s best at articulating the
huge financial risk the oil, coal, and natural gas industries face from
stranded assets - all the pipelines, ocean drilling platforms, ports, mining
equipment and power plants that will soon be obsolete... there is an
unmistakable sense that with disaster comes opportunity. Will we seize this
moment to become a more just, more equitable, more resilient world.” —The
New York Times Book Review
"[In The Green New Deal], economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin, whose work has inspired climate legislation in China and in various countries in the European Union (E.U.), is well positioned to advocate for this new political vision. In The Green New … More…
"[In The Green New Deal], economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin, whose work has inspired climate legislation in China and in various countries in the European Union (E.U.), is well positioned to advocate for this new political vision. In The Green New … More…
Reviews from Goodreads
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Jeremy Rifkin
JEREMY RIFKIN, one of the most
popular social thinkers of our time, is the bestselling author of 20 books
including The Zero Marginal Cost Society, The Third
Industrial Revolution, The Empathic Civilization, The
European Dream, The Age of Access, The Hydrogen Economy,
and The End of Work. His books have been translated into more than
35 languages. Rifkin is an advisor to the European Union, the People’s Republic
of China, and heads of state around the world. He has taught at the Wharton
School's Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania since
1995 and is the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington,
DC.
Jeremy Rifkin
None
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o
THE THIRD
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
--Rifkin, Jeremy. The
Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy,
the Economy, and the World. Excerpt: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/the-third-industrial-revolution-_b_964049.html Review: http://energybulletin.net/media/2011-10-11/jeremy-rifkin-third-industrial-revolution
Published
Oct 4 2011 by Climate One,
Archived Oct 11 2011
Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution
by Justin Gerdes
Description:
The world is doomed to repeat four-year
cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don’t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin
warned a Climate One audience in
For Rifkin, author
of the new The Third
Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy and Changing
the World, a seminal event occurred in July 2008, when the price of
oil hit $147 a barrel. “Prices for everything on the supply chain went through
the roof, from food to petrochemicals. Purchasing power plummeted all over the
world that month. An entire economic engine of the Industrial Revolution shut
down,” he said...
"Every time
we try to re-grow the economy at the same growth rate we were growing before
July 2008, the price of oil goes up, all of the other prices goes up,
purchasing power goes down, and it collapses.” This is a wall we can’t go
beyond under the current energy regime, he said. “We’re in this wild gyration
of four-year cycles, where we’re going to try to re-grow, collapse, re-grow,
collapse.”
The solution is a
plan based on five pillars, which is being implemented in the European Union:
1) Renewable energy targets: such as the EU’s 20% by 2020 mandate 2) Green
buildings: over the next 40 years, Europe plans to convert its 191 million
buildings into energy-efficient, micro power plants 3) Energy storage:
batteries, flywheels, and hydrogen used to smooth the intermittency of
renewables 4) “Energy Internet”: create a central nervous system so that
buildings can talk to the grid and sell or store power depending on prices 5)
Plug-in electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles... MORE: http://energybulletin.net/media/2011-10-11/jeremy-rifkin-third-industrial-revolution
Audio:
Original article available here
Jeremy Rifkin books
--Rifkin, Jeremy. The
Empathic Civilization. Rev. Amanda
Gefter, “Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution,” NewScientist (Feb.
17, 2010). In The Empathic
Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin argues that before we can save ourselves from
climate change we have to break a vicious circle and embrace a new model of
society based on scientists' new understanding of human nature. I asked him how
we can do it. MORE: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/02/jeremy-rifkin-the-third-industrial-revolution.html
The End of Work--Rifkin, Jeremy.
--
1 comment:
Back in the 1980's,you couldn't pick up a newspaper or magazine without reading about Rifkin
attacking Biotechnology.He filed a ton of lawsuits against it.His main complaint was that scientists were rushing to use this technology without having a formal,discussion,debate and
a full scale evaluation on it's safety and impact on society and the enviorment.He raised
concerns and issues and warned of unforeseen consequences.But now,with his Third Industrial
Revolution,Rifkin's doing the exact opposite.He's getting people all excited and anxious to
make the switch to renewable energy.The problem is Rifkin's not raising concerns and issues
with renewable energy like he did with Biotechnology.He's not questioning the cost,safety and
reliability of hydrogen and battery storage and the toxic chemicals and materials used in the
manufacturing of solar panels.Not to mention the reliability of solar panels and wind generators and their impact on society and the enviorment.Rifkin also neglects to mention
all the mining that will have to be done and the pollution that will be created in order to
obtain the minerals for these renewable energy products.He also fails to mention how we're
going to dispose of the toxic chemicals used to make solar panels.Are we supposed to pay
these truckers to secretly dump it out in the middle of nowhere like the petrochemical
industry did or dump it next to a school playground like China is doing?And DON'T tell me
Rifkin doesn't know about this.He's keeping his mouth shut because he's in favor of this
technology.He's not going to listen to or say anything negative about it.What I can't
understand is why the people who interview Rifkin never question him about this.
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