Wow. This past Sunday in Sonoma, Jeremy Rifkin had a packed house organized by the Praxis Peace Institute in the palm of his hand, providing a summary of his new book, The Empathetic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World Crisis. I have rarely, if ever, seen someone put all the social and environmental pieces together in such a concise and achievable framework.
Drawing from the major “revolutions” in history, from the agrarian, to industrial and post-industrial, Rifkin notes that we are at the nexus of a new, major revolution. By combining the effects and potential of distributed information and communications technology (ICT) with a distributed energy infrastructure (picture each building as its own power plant, using direct renewable energy sources), a new and distributed consciousness around empathy is then possible.
If we average the most conservative and aggressive peak oil predictions, peak oil is somewhere in the middle of this decade and might have already occur ed. The effects this will have on markets and pricing, open the door for this new revolution to take hold and the opportunity for a new level of global and local consciousness to take hold. Combine this with the paradigm of local living economies (LLEs) which we fully support at BetterWorld and a world of LLEs interconnected through distributed communcations and energy is a world view that is both sustainable and just.
Many elements of framework and Rifkin’s experience with the European Union where commitments have already been made, is laid out in great detail in his new book, a must read for sure. For more information on Jeremy’s work and his new book: www.foet.org
In service,
Matt
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