New York Times–Bestselling Author: The renowned economic theorist explains how America can—and must—create a post-fossil fuel culture to survive.
We can’t keep doing business as usual. Facing a global emergency, a younger generation has spearheaded a national conversation around a Green New Deal—a movement with the potential to revolutionize society. But while the Green New Deal has become a lightning rod in the political sphere, there is a parallel movement emerging within the business community that will shake the very foundation of the global economy in coming years.
Key sectors of the economy are fast-decoupling from fossil fuels in favor of ever-cheaper solar and wind energies and the new business opportunities and employment that accompany them. New studies are sounding the alarm that trillions of dollars in stranded fossil fuel assets could create a carbon bubble likely to burst by 2028, causing the collapse of the fossil fuel civilization. The marketplace is speaking, and governments will need to adapt if they are to survive and prosper.
In The Green New Deal, Jeremy Rifkin delivers the political narrative and economic plan for the Green New Deal that we need at this critical moment in history. The concurrence of a stranded fossil fuel assets bubble and a green political vision opens up the possibility of a massive shift to a post-carbon ecological era, in time to prevent a temperature rise that will tip us over the edge into runaway climate change. With twenty-five years of experience implementing Green New Deal–style transitions for both the European Union and the People’s Republic of China, Rifkin offers his vision for how to transform the global economy and save life on Earth.
“The Green New Deal takes a stance quite different from that of typical Green New Deal supporters . . . he’s interested in building factories, farms, and vehicles in a fossil-free world, asserting that ‘the Green New Deal is all about infrastructure.’” —The New York Times Book Review
“An urgent endorsement of efforts to remake a doomed fossil-fuel economy before it’s too late.” —Kirkus Reviews
JEREMY RIFKIN, one of the most popular social thinkers of our time, is the bestselling author of 20 books including The Zero Marginal Cost Society, The Third Industrial Revolution, The Empathic Civilization, The European Dream, The Age of Access, The Hydrogen Economy, and The End of Work. His books have been translated into more than 35 languages. Rifkin is an advisor to the European Union, the People’s Republic of China, and heads of state around the world. He has taught at the Wharton School's Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania since 1995 and is the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Part I The Great Disruption: The Decoupling Stampede and Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets
1 It's the Infrastructure, Stupid! 15
2 Power to the People: The Sun and Wind Are Free 46
3 Zero-Carbon Living: Autonomous Electric Mobility, Nodal IoT Buildings, and Smart Ecological Agriculture 74
4 The Tipping Point: The Collapse of the Fossil Fuel Civilization, Circa 2028 102
Part II A Green New Deal Rising from the Ashes
5 Waking the Giant: Pension Power Finds Its Voice 139
6 The Economic Transformation: The New Social Capitalism 166
