The Green New Deal : why the fossil fuel civilization will collapse by 2028, and the bold economic plan to save life on earth

The Green New Deal Why the fossil fuel civilization will collapse by 2028, and the bold economic plan to save life on earth

Jeremy Rifkin

Book - 2019

A new vision for America's future is quickly gaining momentum. Facing a global emergency, a younger generation is spearheading a national conversation around a Green New Deal and setting the agenda for a bold political movement with the potential to revolutionize society. Millennials, the largest voting bloc in the country, are now leading on the issue of climate change. 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 a...nd 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, New York Times bestselling author and renowned economic theorist 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.

Saved in:
Place a Hold Save to List Email this

2nd Floor Show me where

333.79/Rifkin
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 333.79/Rifkin Checked In
Subjects
Energy policy > Environmental aspects.
Clean energy > Government policy.
Sustainable development > Government policy.
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2019.
Language
English
Main Author
Jeremy Rifkin (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
x, 290 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-278) and index.
ISBN
9781250253200
  • It's the infrastructure, stupid!
  • Power to the people : the sun and wind are free
  • Zero-carbon living : autonomous electric mobility, nodal IoT buildings, and smart ecological agriculture
  • The tipping point : the collapse of the fossil fuel civilization, circa 2028
  • Waking the giant : pension power finds its voice
  • The economic transformation : the new social capitalism
  • Mobilizing society : saving life on Earth.
Review by Booklist Review

The concept of a Green New Deal is not exactly new, but it is gaining more notoriety than it has in recent memory thanks to the confluence of the 2020 election cycle and an incoming class of political representatives who are impressively knowledgeable and increasingly concerned about the scope of the environmental emergency facing nations and the planet. Spurred by a younger generation who will be most immediately impacted by the consequences of past inaction, politicians are reckoning with the intricacies of bringing about the necessary policy changes to halt and/or reverse the current disastrous trajectory. To do so will require participation and support from nearly every segment on the business, educational, and political spectrums as the world transitions away from a fossil fuel-based economy and infrastructure. An influential advisor to governments the world over and a prolific author in areas of societal importance, Rifkin delivers a passionate vision and practical narrative, based on his extensive experience implementing pioneering changes throughout the European Union and People's Republic of China.--Carol Haggas Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

America's transition to clean energy is unstoppable--well, almost--according to this boosterish treatise that, contrary to the name, isn't about the stimulus policy promoted by left-leaning Democrats. Sustainability consultant Rifkin (The Third Industrial Revolution) contends that plummeting prices for wind power, solar power, and batteries; a shift to electric vehicles; and "smart" electrical grids will render fossil-fueled energy too expensive to compete, leading to its "inevitable" failure in the marketplace. He embeds this forecast within a primer on "the Third Industrial Revolution" that he predicts will bring households and businesses trading home-brewed solar and wind power online, a vision of energy populism that he touts in ringing but nebulous verbiage. ("The distributed and laterally scaled infrastructure of the Third Industrial Revolution is... fluid and open, allowing literally billions of players around the world to assemble and reassemble, and disaggregate and reaggregate, their own component parts of it... in continuously evolving blockchained platforms.") In the fine print, Rifkin grants that this collapse isn't quite inevitable: he allows that market forces will need help from trillions in government subsidies for renewables to displace carbon and says little about the difficulty of knitting wind and solar into a reliable energy supply. Readers will find more jargon and hype than serious analysis. (Sept.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A noted activist elucidates the program of environmental and economic reform that is being largely ignored on Capitol Hill.According to Rifkin (The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, 2014, etc.), the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, we are within a degree or two of temperature rise before we see the cataclysm of "runaway feedback loops and a cascade of climate-change events that would decimate the Earth's ecosystems." The possibility of such devastation, he argues, is not lost on heartland voters who, though perhaps otherwise conservative, are increasingly alarmed by severe weather events and other clear signs of a changing climate regime, manifest in expensive destruction of life and property. Against this, Rifkin notes trends among younger citizens to participate in a so-called sharing economy, with shared housing, office space, vehicles, tools, and the like, "allowing the human race to use far less of the resources of the Earth while passing on what they no longer use to others and, by doing so, dramatically reducing carbon emissions." It will take more than that, of course: Infrastructure must be overhauled, which would add jobs to the economy, and old ways of doing things must be cast aside. There's not much time to do so. Rifkin projects that without change, "fossil-fuel civilization" has less than 10 years of life; he adds that this change "is inevitable, despite any efforts by the fossil fuel industries to forestall it." The author then enumerates a 21-point program around Democratic proposals spearheaded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, closing with the fond hope that a "biosphere consciousness" is emerging. A little hectoring alternating with wishful thinking goes a long way, but Rifkin's point that something needs to be doneimmediatelyis well taken. Better a Chicken Little than a Pollyanna any day of the week.An urgent endorsement of efforts to remake a doomed fossil-fuel economy before it's too late. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Similar Items