The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Po...

Despite the economic crisis and the struggle to save the euro, the European dream is not dead: what Europe needs is an "economic vision and game plan" that can create "a seamless, distributive energy grid" and build a third industrial revolution, said Jeremy Rifkin, author of 'The European Dream', in an interview with EURACTIV.

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Po...

Pillar four is the most interesting pillar, because this is where you take the Internet communication technology revolution and combine it with the distributive renewable energy revolution and create the third industrial revolution.

The technology is there and we are beginning to lay down the master plan. This is the third industrial revolution. The democratisation of energy. But it creates a totally new economic infrastructure, equivalent to the intestate highway in the 20th century or equivalent to the railroad that connected cities in the 19th century.

This is all happening. It is not theoretical. Utility companies are beginning to become distributive, moving towards the third industrial revolution, because they have to deal with the plug-in and transportation of electric and fuel-cell cars.

Because if you can integrate Europe in an internal market with a third industrial revolution and a post-carbon energy infrastructure, it is going to create millions of jobs to implement the four pillar strategy.

Here is the way it works. I have set up the third industrial revolution CEO business roundtable, made up of 100 companies and cooperatives around the world. We are beginning to lay down master plans. We just presented one for Rome. It took us six months with the lead development team. We put out a 150-page report on how Rome can move to a third post-carbon revolution economy.

Second, they should say: where do we want to be in twenty years from now, in Europe? Do we want to have the sunset energies, sunset technologies and sunset infrastructure of a twentieth century second industrial revolution? Or do we want the sunrise energies, sunrise technologies and sunrise infrastructure of a twenty-first century third industrial revolution?

Let me take what you are saying and put it in the context of the failure of Copenhagen. Should we put our resources behind implementing the third industrial revolution and forget international negotiations that seem to be stuck in delivering an international legally-binding agreement?

If you are saying, what about if the EU does it and no one else does it, this is what I am going to tell you: if the EU does it, everyone is going to be jumping on board, because China and India, the United States and Japan do not want to be back in the pack in the sunset of the second industrial revolution, whose technologies are old, and whose infrastructure is collapsing, while the great world power, the EU, the lead economy is moving quickly to a third industrial revolution: new technology, new infrastructure, millions of jobs and economic sustainability and post-carbon. 041b061a72