Jeremy Rifkin: A new economic vision for addressing climate change

[LuckyTheDog]

By Jeremy Rifkin
The White House released its national climate plan for reducing CO2 emissions, warning that climate change is adversely affecting every region of the United States, with dire consequences for the economy. Unfortunately, the new initiatives by the US government to ward off rising temperatures are weak at best. What’s sorely missing from the climate change debate is a new economic vision that can quickly transition the US and global economy out of carbon based energy and into renewable energies, while simultaneously increasing productivity and reducing the amount of the earth’s resources used in the economic process, ensuring a more prosperous and sustainable society. That vision is now taking hold.

A powerful new technology revolution is evolving that will allow enterprises and prosumers to make and share their own green electricity, and an increasing array of sustainable physical products and services, at near zero marginal cost, just as billions of prosumers now do with information goods. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing an additional unit of a good or service after the fixed costs have been absorbed). The Communication Internet is converging with a fledgling Energy Internet and nascent automated Transport and Logistics Internet, creating a new technological infrastructure for society–a Third Industrial Revolution–that could fundamentally alter the global economy and usher in an ecological civilization in the first half of the 21st century. Billions of sensors are being attached to resource flows, warehouses, road systems, factory production lines, the electricity transmission grid, offices, homes, stores, and vehicles, continually monitoring their status and performance and feeding big data back to the Internet of Things. By 2030, it is estimated there will be more than 100 trillion sensors connecting the human and natural environment in a global distributed intelligent network.

Enterprises and prosumers will be able to connect to the Internet of Things (IoT) and use Big Data and analytics to develop predictive algorithms that can speed efficiency, increase productivity, reduce the use of natural resources, and lower the marginal cost of producing renewable energy and manufactured products to near zero. They will be able to share what they’ve made with others on an emerging Collaborative Commons that is beginning to flourish alongside the conventional capitalist marketplace.

MORE HERE: http://wonkynewsnerd.com/jeremy-rifkin-new-economic-vision/

[Control-Z]

1. Wow. Excellent article.

I haven't gone to the site yet but what you have posted here is exciting and, more importantly, it offers a little hope. Something we have been sorely missing.

K&R