‘The era of resilience’ (Paidós) is the latest and most accessible of the essays published by the sociologist and economist jeremy rifkinthe influential thinker and author of the bestseller ‘The End of Work’ who has spent decades advising the European Union and China on their path to Third Industrial Revolution. A change that involves abandoning fossil fuels and rewilding the land. Rifkin argues that if in the 19th and 20th centuries human beings devoted themselves to exploiting the earth’s resources, in the 21st the economy will focus on responsible management of the planet, with millions of new jobs in the ecomanagement.-What is the Third Industrial Revolution?
-We know that the industrial civilization based on fossil fuels is leading us to death, to the sixth extinction. New ways of mobility and logistics must be sought and this will entail a new economy and governance. The beginning of the end was the Great Recession of 2008. We have already completed the revolution in communication: the mobile that we carry in our pocket has more advanced technology than the one that was the moon. Now it is the turn of solar and wind energy.
Because the sun and the wind cannot be controlled and unlike oil, they are everywhere. The important thing is that many users already share the excess energy that they have left over. In 20 years energy will be like the internet, it will travel under the oceans from one continent to another and will be shared in different time zones around the world. There is no country or company that can monopolize them or start wars to get hold of them. Ukraine will be the last war for fossil fuels.
-In your book you criticize the mantra of efficiency, why?
-It all started with the watch of the Benedictine monks, which gave way to pocket watches, so we began to move towards the industrial lifestyle. We had the people and the factories timed. Then we created time zones around the world so we could organize ourselves. All this efficiency was used to extract greater volumes of resources from the earth and the biosphere, in ever shorter time intervals. It is common sense to see that this system is not sustainable. The soul mate of efficiency is productivity and nature has nothing to do with it. Ecosystems are not about growth, but about flourishing.
-Where does the idea of rewilding the Earth?
-Yes, we are moving from financial capital to ecological capital and from productivity to regenerative nature. From hyperconsumption to ecological management. From giant companies to SMEs. The planet has gone through five mass extinctions and scientists have told us that we are in the middle of the sixth: we could lose half of our species this century. It is something serious. Pandemics will continue. When my father was born in 1908, 85% of the planet was wild. Today that portion is 25% and by the end of the century it could be 0. Viruses are migrating and are getting closer and closer to our health and the urban population. Actually, it all starts in the Bible.
-In the Bible?
-In Genesis, the Garden of Eden appears as a gift to man. In that, Judaism and Christianity have a vision of nature very different from Eastern religions. God gives Adam dominion over life on earth. That tradition led us to the agricultural and industrial revolutions, to the era of progress, based on extracting resources from the earth. And from there we have gone to extinction.
-At least now they talk about it, right?
-Yes, we have begun to realize that climate change affects each one of us. The massive snowfalls in the winter, the spring that floods entire continents; droughts, fires and heat waves in summer or the combination of hurricanes and typhoons in autumn. What no one talks about is another change: each of us, in our own little world, are beginning to realize that the planet is much more powerful than we ever thought. And that our species is actually something small and unimportant.
Does that explain why young people are the most concerned about the environment?
The real shift in consciousness has been in Generation Z, the high school kids who wonder what will happen to them and their children. They are protesting all over the world. We humans love to protest, that’s nothing new, but what is radically different is that it is the first time that a whole generation of different religions and ideologies sees itself as a real endangered species.
-Are large companies interested in this change?
-The 500 largest companies on the Forbes list represent a third of global GDP, but only employ 65 million people of the 3.5 billion workers in the world. The 8 richest people on the planet accumulate the same wealth as half of human beings. Even Karl Marx was in favor of productivity. It is not capitalism versus socialism, it is the industrial infrastructure that has made this growth possible. But most of those big companies won’t be here in 30 years. Some will survive, but we are moving into a much more distributed pattern. Cooperative internet SMEs are already emerging that will eventually replace giants like Google and Facebook.
-What do you think of the Climate Summit?
-The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, has recognized that we are going to exceed 1.5 degrees and that we are facing a big problem. It’s going to be hell. But in his speech he spoke of adaptability. People no longer talk about efficiency, but about resilience. It has cost, but the concept is beginning to permeate. We need a story, a new narrative. What sets us apart as the most adaptable species is that we have stories we can tell ourselves about how we live in the world.
-Is the change too slow?
-I read a quote 40 years ago from Hegel that said that happiness is the blank pages of history, the periods of harmony. It’s those moments of empathy where we identify with each other, cooperate, and move forward. Empathy evolves, sometimes it collapses and a new type is born. At first, the human had empathy for his blood ties, the tribe closest to him. As we built towns and cities connected by highways, empathy grew.
-Where?
-The great religions were not founded at the same time by chance: that thousands of people without family ties considered themselves united and greeted each other with a kiss, like Christians, was another type of empathy. Then another type of family arrived: they all considered themselves Italian or French. There are still tribal wars, but today we are evolving into another empathy: a consciousness of biophilia. Young people today feel more than ever that they belong to a species whose existence is threatened and that unites them.
-How can you advance in that awareness of biophilia?
-I have hope in small children, I trust that they are strong enough. In the future they will keep their religions and their nationality, but they will feel that they are part of the planet in a different way from their parents. I’m not utopian, I hate utopians. But I see a future of bioregional governments: a flood or a hurricane doesn’t care about political borders. It is time to extend governments to bioregions. In the United States there are already two: the Cascadia and the region of the great lakes that also includes part of Canada.
-What do you think of the attacks on paintings in museums by activists?
-I debuted as an activist in 1973, in the middle of the oil crisis. We crashed the Boston Tea Party 200th anniversary party by dumping empty barrels into the sea, dubbed the Boston Oil Party by the press. It was my first protest against fossil fuels. I think all protests have to be peaceful. But it is not enough to protest, because that is asking those in power to change things and we all have to change. Each of these young people has to choose which path he wants to take in life and how to raise his children. Many are already changing, they have become vegan, for example. Something that is great.
-He assures that his book is not for cynics.
-Yes, and many millennials are, they blame the boomers of the world that they have left. That is not the correct way to approach the problem. There is nothing we can do with the past. We were wrong, the earth is warming up and we are in a moment of learning as a species. We urgently need to reacclimatize ourselves to the earth.