We are approaching the sunset of the oil era in the first half of the 21st century. The price of oil on global markets continues to climb and peak global oil is within sight in the coming decades. At the same time, the dramatic rise in carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is raising the earth's temperature and threatening an unprecedented change in the chemistry of the planet and global climate, with ominous consequences for the future of human civilization and the ecosystems of the earth.
While oil, coal, and natural gas will continue to provide a substantial portion of the world's and the European Union's energy well into the 21st century, there is a growing consensus that we are entering a twilight period where the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction is beginning to act as a drag on the world economy. During this twilight era, the 27 EU member states are making every effort to ensure that the remaining stock of fossil fuels is used more efficiently and are experimenting with clean energy technologies to limit carbon dioxide emissions in the burning of conventional fuels. These efforts fall in line with the EU mandate that the member states increase energy efficiency 20 percent by 2020 and reduce their global warming emissions 20 percent (based on 1990 levels), again by 2020. But, greater efficiencies and mandated global warming gas reductions, by themselves, are not enough to adequately address the unprecedented crisis of global warming and global peak oil and gas production. Looking to the future, every government will need to explore new energy paths and establish new economic models with the goal of achieving as close to zero carbon emissions as possible.
THE GREAT ECONOMIC REVOLUTIONS IN HISTORY: THE CONVERGENCE OF NEW ENERGY AND COMMUNICATIONS REGIMES
The great pivotal economic changes in world history have occurred when new energy regimes converge with new communication regimes. When that convergence happens, society is restructured in wholly new ways. In the early modern era, the coming together of coal powered steam technology and the print press gave birth to the first industrial revolution. It would have been impossible to organize the dramatic increase in the pace, speed, flow, density, and connectivity of economic activity made possible by the coal fired steam engine using the older codex and oral forms of communication. In the late nineteenth century and throughout the first two thirds of the twentieth century, first generation electrical forms of communication—the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, electric typewriters, calculators, etc.—converged with the introduction of oil and the internal combustion engine, becoming the communications command and control mechanism for organizing and marketing the second industrial revolution.
A great communications revolution occurred in the 1990s. Second generation electrical forms of communication—personal computers, the internet, the World Wide Web, and wireless communication technologies—connected the central nervous system of more than a billion people on Earth at the speed of light. And, although the new software and communication revolutions have begun to increase productivity in every industry, their true potential is yet to be fully realized. That potential lies in their convergence with renewable energy, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, to create the first “distributed” energy regimes.
The same design principles and smart technologies that made possible the internet, and vast distributed global communication networks, will be used to reconfigure the world's power grids so that people can produce renewable energy and share it peer-to-peer, just like they now produce and share information, creating a new, decentralized form of energy use. We need to envision a future in which millions of individual players can collect, produce and store locally generated renewable energy in their homes, offices, factories, and vehicles, and share their power generation with each other across a Europe-wide intelligent intergrid. (Hydrogen is a universal storage medium for intermittent renewable energies; just as digital is a universal storage mechanism for text, audio, video, data and other forms of media)
The question is often asked as to whether renewable energy, in the long run, can provide enough power to run a national or global economy? Just as second generation information systems grid technologies allow businesses to connect thousands of desktop computers, creating far more distributed computing power than even the most powerful centralized computers that exist, millions of local producers of renewable energy, using hydrogen storage and intelligent utility networks, can potentially produce far more distributed power than the older centralized forms of energy – oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear – that we currently rely on.
The creation of a renewable energy regime, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, and distributed via smart intergrids, opens the door to a Third Industrial Revolution and should have as powerful an economic multiplier effect in the 21st century as the convergence of mass print technology with coal and steam power technology in the 19th century, and the coming together of electrical forms of communication with oil and the internal combustion engine in the 20th century.
European industry has the scientific, technological, and financial know-how to spearhead the shift to renewable energies, a hydrogen economy, and an intelligent power grid and, by so doing, lead the world into a new economic era. Europe's world class automotive industry, chemical industry, engineering industry, construction industry, software, computer and communication industries, and banking and insurance industries, give it a leg up in the race to the Third Industrial Revolution.
By fostering renewable energies, a hydrogen infrastructure, and a continent-wide intelligent intergrid, the European Union can help create a sustainable economic development plan for its 500 million citizens in the first half of the 21st century.
The Third Industrial Revolution will require a wholesale reconfiguration of the transport, construction, and electricity sectors, creating new goods and services, spawning new businesses, and providing millions of new job.
Being first to market will position the European Union as a leader in the Third Industrial Revolution, giving it the commercial edge in the export of green technological know-how and equipment around the world. Producing a new generation of renewable energy technologies, manufacturing portable and stationary fuel cells, reinventing the automobile, transforming Europe's millions of buildings into power plants to produce renewable energy for internal consumption or distribution back to the grid, reconfiguring the electrical power grid as a intelligent utility network, as well as producing all of the accompanying technologies, goods and services that make up a high-tech Third Industrial Revolution economy, will have an economic multiplier effect that stretches well toward the mid decades of the 21st century.
The coming together of distributed communication technologies and distributed renewable energies via an open access, intelligent power grid, represents “power to the people”. For a younger generation that's growing up in a less hierarchical and more networked world, the ability to produce and share their own energy, like they produce and share their own information, in an open access intergrid, will seem both natural and commonplace.
The key challenge that every nation needs to address is where they want their country to be in ten years from now: In the sunset energies and industries of the second industrial revolution or the sunrise energies and industries of the Third Industrial Revolution. The Third Industrial Revolution is the end-game that takes the world out of the old carbon and uranium-based energies and into a non-polluting, sustainable future for the human race.
Jeremy Rifkin is the author of the international best seller, The European Dream, which has been translated into eighteen languages. The book won the prestigious Corine International Book Prize in Germany in 2005 as best economic book of the year.
Mr. Rifkin’s lecture presentation delves into the many features of the nascent European Dream. For more than two centuries the world has looked to the American Dream for inspiration and guidance. Now, a newly emerging European Dream is beginning to offer an alternative to the American vision. The European Dream represents a new chapter in world history. It is the first attempt at creating a global consciousness, befitting a globalizing economy. Mr. Rifkin will explore the political, social, and cultural aspects of the fledgling European Dream and its implications for the business community and society.
Mr. Rifkin will also explore the future economic potential of the expanded European Union, with particular emphasis on the opportunities and challenges facing both European and American companies in each other’s respective markets. The European Union is now a close economic rival to the U.S. and the world’s only other economic superpower. With its 455 million consumers, the EU is now the largest internal market in the world. It’s also the largest exporting power. And the Euro is now stronger than the dollar—a reality few American economists would have thought conceivable just four years ago. Moreover, much of Europe enjoys a longer life span and greater literacy, and has less poverty and crime, less blight and sprawl, longer vacations, and shorter commutes to work than we do in the United States. When one considers what makes a people great and what constitutes a good quality of life, observes Rifkin, the European model has much to offer the world.
Europe has become a giant laboratory for rethinking humanity’s future. In many respects, the European Dream is the mirror opposite of the American Dream. While the American Dream emphasizes economic growth and individual opportunity, the European Dream focuses more on sustainable development, and the quality of life. We Americans emphasize the work ethic. Europeans place more of a premium on balancing work and leisure. America has always seen itself as a great melting pot. Europeans, instead, prefer to preserve their rich multicultural diversity. We believe in maintaining a strong military presence in the world. Europeans, by contrast, emphasize economic cooperation and consensus over traditional geo-political approaches to foreign policy.
All of this does not suggest that Europe has suddenly become a utopia. Its problems, Rifkin cautions, are complex and its weaknesses are glaringly transparent. And, of course, Europeans’ high-mindedness is often riddled with hypocrisy. The point, however, is not whether Europeans are living up to the dream they have for themselves. We have never fully lived up to the American Dream. Rather, what’s crucial, notes Rifkin, is that Europe is articulating a bold new vision for the future of humanity that differs in many of its most fundamental aspects from America’s.
European Union based companies and industries are increasingly reaching out to the Asian market, creating close economic ties in an area of the world long dominated by U.S. commercial interests. Mr. Rifkin will examine the economic, political, and cultural implications of Europe’s new relationship to the United States and Asia and how relations between the world’s three major economic regions will likely affect the future of globalization.
Mr. Rifkin will also focus on what he believes to be an equally important consideration for both European and American businesses: to wit, the need to fully integrate the internal infrastructure of the European Union over the course of the next decade so that commerce and trade can be carried out with the same ease as in the continental United States. The key to Europe’s economic future is a successful integration of Europe’s communications, energy, and transport grid and its information technology infrastructure. The EU also has to speed the integration of a common set of regulations governing commerce and trade, as well as capital and labor flows, and ensure that English becomes lingua franca for business by the second decade of the century. The future success of the European Union will depend, in no small measure, on the integration of the European infrastructure. Mr. Rifkin will explore the ways that companies can both facilitate the integration process and benefit from its implementation.
Rifkin draws on more than twenty years of personal experience working in Europe, where he has advised heads of state and political parties, consulted with Europe’s leading companies, and helped spur grassroots environmental and social justice campaigns.
Jeremy Rifkin is the author of, The End of Work, the international bestseller that has been translated into sixteen languages. The book is widely credited with helping shape the current global debate on technology displacement, corporate downsizing, outsourcing, global labor mobility, and the future of jobs.
Mr. Rifkin’s presentation will focus on the vast changes taking place in the nature of employment, as the world makes the shift from mass wage labor to small, highly educated, elite workforces, working side by side with increasingly intelligent, cheap and efficient automated technologies. We are entering a new phase in history – one characterized by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs. Just as the steam engine replaced slave labor in the 19th century, the new intelligent technologies of the IT, biotech, and nanotechnology revolutions, are fast replacing mass wage labor in the 21st century. Worldwide unemployment is now at the highest level since the great depression of the 1930s. The number of people underemployed or without work is rising sharply as millions of new entrants into the workforce find themselves marginalized by an extraordinary high-technology revolution. Sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications, and other cutting-edge technologies are fast replacing human beings in virtually every sector and industry. In the past seven years alone, 14% of all the manufacturing jobs in the world have disappeared, as more and more human labor has been replaced with intelligent, automated technology. Similar technology displacement is occurring in the white collar and service industries.
Many jobs are never coming back. Blue collar workers, secretaries, receptionists, clerical workers, sales clerks, bank tellers, telephone operators, librarians, wholesalers, and middle managers are just a few of the many occupations destined for virtual extinction. While some new jobs are being created, they are, for the most part, either highly conceptual, knowledge-based and boutique, or low paying, and generally temporary in duration. The world is fast polarizing into two potentially irreconcilable forces: on one side, an information elite that controls and manages the high-tech global economy; and on the other, the growing numbers of underemployed or permanently displaced workers, who have few prospects and little hope for meaningful employment in an increasingly automated world.
We need to move beyond the delusion of retraining for a dwindling number of mass wage labor jobs, and begin to ponder the unthinkable – to prepare ourselves and our institutions for a world that is phasing out mass employment in the production and marketing of goods and services. Redefining the role of the individual in a near workerless society is likely to be the most pressing issue in the decades to come.
Fresh alternatives to formal work will need to be devised. New approaches to providing income and purchasing power will have to be implemented. Greater reliance will need to be placed on creating new employment opportunities in the emerging “third sector”, or civil society.
The end of mass wage labor could lead to unprecedented social upheaval, or signal the beginning of a great social transformation and rebirth of the human spirit.
Jeremy Rifkin is the author of the international best seller, The Age of Access, which has been translated into fourteen languages. Mr. Rifkin’s lecture, “The Age of Access”, will focus on the profound changes taking place in the global economy with particular emphasis on the new economic models that are beginning to fundamentally change the way we do business.
A great change is occurring in the nature of commerce, although, as yet, it has gone largely undetected and unexamined by the media. The new information and telecommunications technologies, e-commerce and globalization are making possible a new economic era as different from market capitalism as the latter is dissimilar from mercantilism. In the new century, markets are slowly giving way to network ways of conducting business, with far reaching implications for the future of society.
There are a number of reasons for this basic restructuring of commercial life. First, the near warp speed of economic activity makes discrete market-based transactions far too slow in the coming century. In the new era, because every product is “information intensive” and being continuously upgraded, virtually everything is treated more as a service one accesses than a good one acquires. The notion of exchanging and holding on to fixed property becomes an anachronism in a society where everything is continually evolving. Second, e-commerce reduces market-based transaction costs toward zero, narrowing the traditional profit margins on sales related activity. Third, information and telecommunications technologies allow for a continuous flow of economic activity, transforming commerce from a linear sequence to a cyclical process. In short, in markets economic activity is discrete and bounded in nature while in networks economic activity is uninterrupted and perpetual. In the future, individual market transactions give way to 24/7 commodified relationships in networks in the form of memberships, subscriptions, leases, rentals, time shares, retainer agreements, and other “time-based” access arrangements.
In a linear market-based model of commerce, it is the goods that are commodified. In a process oriented network model, it is human time itself that becomes commodified. Institutions and individuals increasingly pay for the use of things over time rather than pay for the things themselves. That’s because in the old economy material resources are scarce and valuable whereas in the new economy human time is the scarce resource. The bottom line is that in an exchange economy, products are the market while in a network economy, each individual’s lifetime of experiences is the ultimate market.
In his lecture, Mr. Rifkin will discuss the many features of the emerging new economic system, including: the shift from geography to cyberspace and from national markets to global networks; the conflicts and synergies developing between the traditional intellectual property rights regime and the new open-source access models; the increasing popularity of co-sharing and gain savings agreements between former competitors, suppliers and distributors; the transition from conventional exchange of goods and services to selling human time and experiences; and the emergence of cultural production and new cultural based industries.
Mr. Rifkin is the author of The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World. The book, an international bestseller, has been translated into more than twenty one languages and is the most widely read book on biotechnology in the world.
In his presentation, Mr. Rifkin will explore, in detail, the great shift into the biotech century. After more than forty years of running on parallel tracks, the information and life sciences are beginning to fuse into a single powerful technological and economic force that is laying the foundation for the Biotech Century. The computer is increasingly being used to decipher, manage and organize the vast genetic information that is the raw resource of the new global economy. Already, transnational corporations are creating giant life-science complexes from which to fashion a bio-industrial world.
Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next few decades than in the previous 1,000 years. Food and fiber will likely be grown indoors in giant bacteria baths, partially eliminating the farmer and the soil for the first time in history. Animal and human cloning could be commonplace, with "replication" increasingly replacing "reproduction." Millions of people could obtain a detailed genetic readout of themselves, allowing them to gaze into their own biological future and predict and plan their lives in ways never before possible. Parents may choose to have their children conceived in test-tubes and gestated in artificial wombs outside the human body. Genetic changes could be made in human fetuses to correct deadly diseases and disorders and enhance mood, behavior, intelligence and physical traits.
The Biotech Century promises a cornucopia of genetically engineered plants and animals to feed a hungry world, genetically derived sources of energy and fiber to propel commerce and build a "renewable" society, wonder drugs and genetic therapies to produce healthier babies, eliminate human suffering, and extend the human life span. But, with every step we take into this "Brave New World," the nagging question, "At what cost?" will haunt us.
The new genetic commerce raises more troubling issues than any other economic revolution in history. Will the artificial creation of cloned, chimeric and transgenic animals mean the end of nature and the substitution of a "bio - industrial" world? Will the mass release of thousands of genetically engineered life forms into the environment cause catastrophic genetic pollution and irreversible damage to the biosphere? What are the consequences for the global economy and society of reducing the world's gene pool to patented intellectual property controlled exclusively by a handful of life-science corporations? What will it mean to live in a world where babies are genetically engineered and customized in the womb, and where people are increasingly identified, stereotyped, and discriminated against on the basis of their genotype? What are the risks we take in attempting to design more "perfect" human beings?
The biotech revolution will force each of us to put a mirror to our most deeply held values, making us ponder the ultimate question of the purpose and meaning of existence. This may turn out to be its most important contribution.
In his lecture, "The Global Environmental Crisis: The Path to Sustainable Development", Mr. Rifkin provides a big-picture analysis of the major ecological challenges of the 21st century and the economic and political initiatives that will need to be put in place to address them.
Mr. Rifkin's talk begins with a broad overview of the far-reaching ecological and economic impacts that “real-time global warming” and the rising price of energy on world markets are having on the earth's biosphere. The presentation examines how climate change, population growth, consumer lifestyles, and economic development are resulting in loss of biodiversity, shrinking habitats, water shortages and spreading deforestation and desertification.
Mr. Rifkin helps his audience better understand concepts like “caring capacity” and “sustainable development” by exploring the principles of ecology and the laws of thermodynamics (the energy laws). This part of the discussion is designed to be both educational and ‘audience friendly' providing a strong theoretical context for understanding ecology and the environmental challenges we face.
Mr. Rifkin devotes a considerable amount of his lecture to exploring solutions. He introduces trailblazing new economic models that are fundamentally changing the way companies do business. Sustainable development has moved from the periphery to the center of economic planning in corporate boardrooms as industries and firms adjust their business activities to accommodate the environmental challenges ahead. Mr. Rifkin describes the many new business opportunities emerging and gives examples of best practices around the world. He discusses cutting-edge high-technologies being readied or introduced into the marketplace to address environmental concerns, with particular emphasis on renewable energy technologies and distributed power generation using intelligent electricity grids. Mr. Rifkin analyzes the many new investment opportunities opening up with the “greening” of the global economy.
Mr. Rifkin also explores lifestyle changes, and changes in education that are preparing the current generation to think and act in a more environmentally sensitive manner in daily life.
The presentation goes onto examine the changing political landscape as countries make the historic transition from the geopolitics of the 20th century to the biosphere politics of the 21st century. The global environmental crisis is forcing a profound shift in human consciousness. For the first time in the long history of our species, we are beginning to think as a human race, with responsibilities to each other, future generations, our fellow creatures, and the planet we jointly inhabit. Mr. Rifkin will explore the changing political consciousness and end by calling upon the business community to lead, by example, into a sustainable environmental future.
The US is on the edge of a national healthcare crisis. A report released by the Trustees of the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund that provides government health insurance for the elderly, warning that the fund would run out of money to cover hospital treatment in twelve years. Meanwhile, private health insurance premiums have risen by a shocking 73% in the last five years. While government continues to wrestle over how to pay for a health care system that is careening out of control, no one seems willing to acknowledge another even more troubling reality that is further exacerbating the crisis. The American public is getting sicker. Sicker workers, in turn, are not only putting increasing financial strain on the health care system, but also undermining America's productivity and competitiveness, all of which bodes ill for the future of the American economy.
The fact is, American workers are getting fatter, exercising less, still smoking and drinking too much, and becoming more stressed, all of which makes them more prone to the so called “diseases of affluence”… these diseases include Type 2 Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, lung-related illnesses like asthma, cancer, strokes, depression, and attention deficit disorder.
How sick are American workers? To begin with, obesity is skyrocketing across America. One of out every three workers is obese. By contrast, the obesity rate in Japan and Korea is only 3.2%. Many other Asian countries have similarly low rates of obesity. Obesity is now a major contributing factor to the onset of Type 2 Diabetes, and a primary contributor to an increase in heart attacks, cancer and strokes.
Affluent workers are also exercising less. High tech lifestyles, sedentary work environments, and more passive entertainments, are making workers more vulnerable to chronic and life threatening diseases. Incredibly, 60% of Americans have no vigorous physical activity in a typical week. Stress is also on the rise, as the demands of a 24/7, nanosecond culture, create time pressures on workers, with an enormous accompanying increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. Not surprisingly, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is becoming a pandemic. In the US, 7.8% of children between the ages of four and seventeen have had ADHD.
It's no wonder that healthcare expenditures in America are going through the roof. The cost of health care in the US is growing by 7.3% a year, and currently totals a whopping 2 trillion dollars and accounts for 16% of the GDP.
The cost of providing healthcare is borne by taxpayers, workers and employers. The steep costs make labor less competitive in global markets. Reduced earnings also means less savings and less consumption for workers. Increased health care costs for the employers reduces profit margins and limits new investment, all of which leads to a vicious downward spiral for the economy.
Major American companies, like General Motors, are worried that the escalating cost of providing healthcare coverage could cripple or even bankrupt their operations in the next few years. GM now pays out $1525 in health care expenditures per car produced — a sum that exceeds the cost of the steel in the car. GM's CEO Rick Wagoner recently quipped: "It's strange. When I joined GM 28 years ago, I did it because I love cars and trucks. I had no idea I'd wind up working as a health care administrator."
A sicker workforce not only raises the cost of labor, but also lowers the productivity of the workforce. In the US, poor worker health accounts for $260 billion in lost productivity per year—or 2.4% of GDP— because of growing absenteeism and what human resource professionals call “presenteeism”: that is, deteriorating performance on the job in the form of less stamina, poor concentration, and an increase in errors and accidents.
Is there an answer to the deteriorating health of affluent workers? Yes! And the solution is remarkably simple in concept, but would require a paradigm shift in the way society addresses the question of the health and well being of its citizenry.
A spate of studies over the past 30 years, has provided conclusive evidence that 60-70% of all major diseases are associated with modifiable environmental risks. Poor nutrition, obesity, lack of exercise, stress, smoking, and over-consumption of alcohol all contribute to ill health. Yet, the United States spends a tiny fraction of government funds on prevention, including inoculations, annual diagnostic tests and appropriate medications. Even less is spent on health promotion — that is, facilitating positive changes in lifestyle, including exercise programs, dietary changes, stress reduction programs and the cessation of smoking. The US devotes less than 5% of the federal health care budget on conventional prevention practices, and less than 1% of each research dollar is spent on behavior-oriented health promotion.
A number of major global companies, worried over increasing health care costs and loss of productivity have teamed up with health professionals in a pioneering effort to shift the health paradigm from treating disease to promoting wellness, with incredible results. Companies like Dow Chemical, Kimberly-Clark, Johnson & Johnson, Pitney-Bowes, Prudential Financial, Procter & Gamble, and Volvo/Mack Truck are experimenting with various prevention and health promotion programs and their experience is eye-opening.
To ameliorate the health and quality of life of their workers, companies are installing gym facilities on site or paying for off site health club memberships and professional trainers, providing only healthy meals in company cafeterias and free nutritional instruction for workers and their families, as well as offering stress management counseling and other health promotion services.
Why would companies spend additional funds on promoting wellness? Because the return on investment (ROI) is nothing short of remarkable. For every dollar invested in comprehensive prevention and health promotion programs, these companies are saving $3-8 in the form of reduced health costs and gains in productivity from lower absenteeism and presenteeism. The key to the success of all of these programs is their voluntary nature and the incentives built-in to the process to motivate employees to become involved in changing lifestyle and becoming healthier.
It should be made clear that a prevention and health promotion initiative is not to be regarded as a replacement for existing federal health care coverage, but, rather, a complement--a way of assisting workers to become healthier and lead more productive and happier lives.
How then to begin?
First, government and industry, working together, should help identify best practices and set universal standards for prevention and health promotion.
Second, tax credits and incentives should be put in place to encourage the development of the wellness sector in the health care field. What is required is well trained, qualified companies certified to provide a range of prevention and health promotion services and programs to companies. The creation of a labor intensive wellness industry will create many new jobs and vocations --jobs that by their very nature are anchored within the country.
Third, for every dollar companies commit to creating an in-house wellness staff or for hiring an outside wellness firm, the government should provide a corresponding dollar of tax relief on corporate profits, up to an agreed upon cap.
Fourth, a formula should be established by government, industry, and the trade unions, that would provide for a reduction in the employer and employee contribution to the HMO's, commensurate with the increase in wellness and the money the insurance provider saves in reduced medical cost for employees involved in the wellness program.
The best way to reduce the escalating costs of health care in the US is to shift from treating illness to promoting wellness. We should begin at the workplace.
