We have a future again

The futurologist Jeremy Rifkin (Wikipedia,jeremyrifkin), director of the Foundation of Economic Trends is a leading thinker of our modernity. Many of his books have proved prophetic as The End of Work (1996) or The age of laccès (2000). His latest book, The Third Industrial Revolution (see also the dedicated website) is definitely one of its most ambitious because it gives us nothing less quun future replacement compared to quon abandoned.

The second industrial revolution (1880-2006) is no longer our future
Rifkin draws two conclusions. On the one hand, that of the end of the second industrial revolution based on oil and fossil fuels. More than peak oil, we have reached the peak of globalization, he says. We can no longer base our growth on a system that by definition will generate crisis as fossil fuels will become scarce. Even the prospect of finding new dextractions sectors alone will not fill our insatiable appetite of energy. For him, this is the oil crisis! and organizational consequences pétrodépendance has had on our society as a whole. Energy systems determine the nature of the way they organize themselves civilizations, allocate the activity Economic and trade of fruits, dexercer political power and to structure social relations.

Another observation is based of course on the dramatic consequences qua generated this second industrial revolution on the health of the biosphere. The pages on the subject quégraine Rifkin resemble alarming and depressing findings quon found in all books décologistes aghast. For 450 million years, the Earth has experienced five waves of extinction biological. After each déponge blows, it took about ten million years to regain the lost biodiversity.

Rifkin holds a vehement about. We must stop procrastinating and take note that we can no longer stand the growth, progress, our future on fossil fuels. We must end the predatory parenthesis of the second industrial revolution and engage in another way, that of the Third Industrial Revolution as the baptized. Our future must change perspective and constructive lidéaliste American, this new perspective has to show us a future accessible to all. It is becoming increasingly clear that it we need a new economic logic that can bring us into a future more equitable and sustainable.

Image: Sunset on an oil field, photographed by Fábio Pinheiro.

Our future, this is the model dappliquer distributed Internet has the energy and the whole society
We are today on the eve dune new convergence between communications technology and energy regime. The junction of internet communication and renewable energy generates a third industrial revolution. In the twenty-first century, hundreds of millions will Detrés humans produce their own green energy in their homes, their offices and factories and share them on smart grid of electricity distributed, today exactly as they create their own information and share it on the Internet .
Rifkin sappuie on its knowledge of the characteristics of the revolution in tech news and that of renewable energy to give us a new challenge: that of the energy distributed. The division between people dune energy distributed in an open common area will even broader consequences [than the sharing of information].

For Rifkin, the strategy for doing this is quite simple. The battle plan is based on five key principles:

1. The shift to renewable energy, we not DONT choice, exhaustion of fossil fuels eventually led us to have to stand our economy entirely on renewable energy (which excludes nuclear, that he considers too dangerous and too centralized and , remember, for now only produces 6% of the energy world with 440 plants around the world).
2. The transformation of the building stock of every continent into micro set of energy that collect on-site renewable energy; this is to say move dune centralized generation of energy in a completely distributed generation, whether using personal wind turbines, biogas, solar or even the action of human strength, as also pointed out the strategic plans developed by its teams four European cities to support them in this evolution. The energy model that Rifkin battle is not so much that of fossil fuels, the centralized model that results. By emphasizing a diversified production of electricity distributed and strategy, Rifkin advocates a different economic model based dorganisation the nature of its strategy.
3. The deployment of lhydrogène technology and other storage technologies in every building and ViaMichelin linfrastructure, to store intermittent energies. This is certainly to date one of the weaknesses of the model proposed by Rifkin: our inability to store lélectricité should become a major research challenge, says léconomiste, who had already written a book about it in 2002 The economy hydrogen.
4. The use of dinternet technology to transform the power grid of every continent shared inter-network operated exactly as the energy internet (when millions Scenic modeling produce locally, on site, a small amount of energy, they can sell their surpluses lélectricité network and share with their continental neighbors). Rifkin here highly critical strategy actors lélectricité, which too often imagine an intelligent network centralized future, rather than distributed. Cest The converse we need to do, says futurist. The energy distributed would notably make us do a leap in the rate of efficiency of production and electrical transmission, which remains very low since the 60 Much of the energy we produce is spent during his same route.
5. The change of means of transport by the transition to electric vehicles or plug-in fuel cell able to buy and sell lélectricité on a continental smart grid interactive.
This transition, according to Rifkin, carries with it lopportunité of a new economic development.

Limitations and criticisms
Of course, critics will surely lash out against this vision sometimes a little faster, not so easy to organize or who appear to many unrealistic. Debates are known, which is difficult to disentangle the arguments on the possibility or impossibility of replacing our current electricity production by renewable alternatives, our difficulties to store the energy, the future of a limit of electric transport In figures by Rifkin, other advance other figures. Of course. Diminishing will tax the croissantiste of (what he recognizes to be). Proponents of nuclear and oil, daffabulateur (In recent years, the big oil companies have largely devoted their efforts to a single purpose: to sow doubt and skepticism in public lopinion on climate change In the brief period 2009-2010. the oil, coal and distribution of electricity spent $ 500 million on lobbying to prevent the vote on the legislation dune global warming.).

The distributed model of the Internet and that he tries dappliquer cooperative in the energy and the whole economic operation is not itself also distributed and cooperative that he draws it. To date, the Internet remains an innovation largely recovered by the centralization and competition, bringing in his same infrastructure, a few energy efficient model.

But the main thing is definitely not there in fact.

Despite all the criticism quon can make to the plan, Rifkin offers a powerful narrative, able to tell the story dune new economic revolution and dexpliquer how all these seemingly random technological and commercial initiatives could unsubscribe in a wide strategic plan. Rifkin offers much an economic development plan that will rise to thousands of other businesses and distributed not only a public spending plan. It offers future, when the current crises (economic, environmental and social) and the prospects of our davenir nen fossil economy offer no more, other quune sannonce crisis more serious than that lon knows. The strength of Rifkin is to propose a vision where others have more nen, where the crisis destroyed them all. And it is in this that draws the prospect that it is stimulating: it offers us a future, a future where ecosystems should succeed the market where the distribution and cooperation should replace centralization and competition. How can you not want to join?

Collaboration rather than competition, co-creation rather than militarism
For Rifkin, our future depends on cooperation and co-creation. And it is that vision, too quickly sketched in the book, we may have wanted to develop. Rifkin asks us to make social innovation everywhere, to develop the effective participation of everyone in that future. A refuse centralization. He thus rejects centralized smart grid projects, such as developing the major players lélectricité but his criticism could certainly sétendre to projects of the same type that one can have for the future of the city, transport, etc. Our future depends on distributed intelligent networks. Lélectricité should not go from the farm to consumers, but to all everyone, like the stitches of a peer to peer network.

Image: A sun flower, photographed a solar robot around Rio Trey Ratcliff.

The antagonistic relationship between sellers and buyers gives way to a cooperative relationship between providers and users. The interest staff is subsumed by the interest common. The intellectual property of the information is eclipsed by a new focus on the opening and collective confidence. If lon today prefer transparency to secrecy, this is for one simple reason: when one increases the value of the network, no sappauvrit personally; it enriches everyone, because the gains are equal for all nodes in the effort together. () Therefore, access to the vast global networks becomes an important value that private property rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This is not without consequences, of course. We reaffirm the role of new commons, Rifkin insists. Our ideas on the property are so inseparable from the traditional notions of ownership and dexclusion quon's hard to imagine that it was an older property right that people have enjoyed for centuries: the right daccéder a joint owned property such as that to navigate a river of feed in a local forest, walking on a campaign trail, fishing in a nearby of water courses and meet in a public place. This older idea of ​​property as a right and uap dinclusion was gradually marginalized in the modern era, where market relations have dominated life and where private property has been defined as "the measure of the man." () Lorsquune much of the economic and social life takes place in communal open source, intellectual property becomes, for all practical purposes, an outmoded convention is useless.

This is our model of society we must change
Beyond the economic and energy transition that he proposes, the About Rifkin is eminently political. For him, we need to reform our structures and ways of thinking. This is not so much an economic challenge we succeed, quune civilizational transition. We have to go dune centralized society to a collaborative society. Change energy regime involves changing the very structure of the organization and social policy of our societies.

Without saying so clearly (it may be the subject of his next book?), The idea that he distills Rifkin we need to change the forms of representation and citizen participation. To read it, we rather want to feed the vision we propose Rifkin, in inspiring examples that are based on cooperation and co-creation of our future, rather than to wait for the fact den came up solutions.

The biggest challenge of Rifkin's vision, is not that the company does not share it, is not about not getting a broad consensus on the goals and objectives of his vision, but our political and economic representatives constantly sen advocate on behalf of their interests. And that's what he finally says, referring at length, his discussions with world leaders and difficulties in convincing some of our leaders to change the model. Or spend the centrality that benefits them more lateral distribution, remote, acentrée is a perspective that not nenchante all world leaders, so be sen. As he points out at length: those who are fed tap the energy of fossil are predisposed to run centrally. If industrial era The emphasis placed on the values ​​of discipline and hard work, hierarchical lautorité, the importance of financial capital, market mechanisms and private property relations, cooperative era favors creative play, interactivity peer-to-peer, capital social participation in open communal and access to global networks. Suffice to say that it there is a world to switch from one to another.

Dailleurs, which will surprise the more a French reader of this book, this is the absence of our political and industrial representatives of this debate. While Rifkin presents a defense of Europe, the only French lessai mentioned in the 300 pages of Rifkin's Claude Lenglet, who was research director for European programs Bouygues Immobilier, which has apparently since left the company. Where are the leaders dEDF? Renault? Total? France Telecom? Where are the French politicians? Unlike the Germans, no wasnt shown to large tables of this world tours quévoque Rifkin. No na acceded to the Third Industrial Revolution proposed by Rifkin. Why?

As he says himself, very simply, in an interview with Le Figaro: France is a centralized country. This asset of the past turned against it when daborder the third industrial revolution: it must move to collaborative model required for a successful transition. LAllemagne is much better equipped: it is a decentralized country, a federation of regions. It would be paradoxical that France, who created the scale relevant to the third industrial revolution, namely the European Union, fails. But a tipping policy thinking is needed.

An all the more difficult changes if we look more closely into the burlesque system linfâme the "turnstile" where senior executives of private companies in the energy and high officials of the state are changing hat and office in a kind of whirlwind, Rifkin quips. The future is no longer as in the competition, the militarism Detat Quà collaboration and co-creation. He defends a side company, that is to say, a society in which power is shared between all the members and not only for the benefit of a few.

Of course, Rifkin is perhaps a little far when he speaks, somewhat smugly, lempathie (which was the theme of his previous book A new consciousness for a world in crisis). It has some theatrics a little easy on the love that we have to carry one another. As if a sudden the side we went every society into the arms of each other in a huge surge of selfless generosity.

The struggle between the interests of the old hierarchical power of the second industrial revolution and the emerging interests of the third side to create a new political cleavage, reflecting the rival forces which dispute control of the economy. A new story sWrite before our eyes, and when we penetrate further into new era, it will reshape the idea even as we do politics, futurist advance by opposing the people and institutions who think in terms of hierarchy, barriers and ownership, and those who think in terms of laterality, transparency and opening up.

The organizational and hierarchical thinking is not adapted to the necessary transformation. This is why what failed for several years to bring solutions to the crises we are living and those sannoncent.

This means that future, it's up to us to defend it, to wear it. Exit dune position of consumer and spectator of politics, to go to a position editor. And Rifkin is right, the Internet certainly gives us the means, but it is not enough.

We have a future again, but to see the statements of the candidates presidential election, one to defend. No, because this future challenges the very reason for their application. This future seeks not so much a father figure President of the hierarchical functioning of our society, quune more lateral organization where all public action would finally be more divided, for better reach and more accepted by the entire society. Rifkin gives us indeed a future, but a future which, as all future requires a revolution in attitudes to become a social project.

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