Will The Third Industrial Revolution Create An Economic Boom That Saves The Planet?

Fast Company ^ | April 26, 2017 | Jeff Beer

[2ndDivisionVet]

First, the bad news: GDP is slowing all over the world because productivity has been in decline for two decades. The result has been higher unemployment (especially among young people) and economists talking about 20 more years of slow growth. According to new numbers from Oxfam, just eight people are as rich as half the globe. In addition to this unprecedented inequality, we face climate change that’s taken us into the sixth extinction wave in the history of the planet, and the last time that happened was 65 million years ago. To turn things around before it’s too late, we need a plan that’s both compelling and doable. Economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin thinks he has just that plan: creating what he calls the third industrial revolution, which will be sparked by harnessing renewable energy and enabling automation and the internet of things to result in a prosperous new economy powered by clean energy.

The good news is that people are listening. On February 7, the European Union unveiled its “Smart Europe” plan influenced by Rifkin’s work, which outlines how the 350 regions of Europe will start building out the road maps to transition into a new infrastructure of 5G internet, renewable energy, and automated driverless transport internet, all riding on top of an internet of things platform. Regions in the north of France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands have already begun their transition over the last few years. There’s a similar plan taking place in China: After Premier Li Keqiang read Rifkin’s seminal book, The Third Industrial Revolution, he made Rifkin’s strategies core to the country’s 13th Five-Year plan that was announced last March, and includes billions in renewable energy investment by 2020....

[Robert DeLong]

Some of it is useful, except the renewable energy (at least what has been presented so far) which is totally incapable of meeting the demands that some of the useful aspects of the 3rd industrial revolution provide. The one energy, nuclear, has been taken off the table. That needs to change. Nuclear energy is the salvation, in my opinion.

[Thalean]

While I don’t think that carbon is “pollution”, and I don’t think that climate change is anthropogenic—at least not that we can actually measure, I do think real pollution is a massive problem.

All true conservatives are environmentalists at heart, we just have common sense about it.

I look at it this way: for every factory we offshore to China, we end up polluting 10x as much as we would if the factory was here. In reality, all environmentalists should want to coalesce industry in the West, because we’re the only ones who take any steps to mitigate real pollution (things like nitrates or CFCs etc. not carbon).

I think that disruptive technologies like 3d printing & increased automation will help, but at the end of the day, a technological advantage isn’t enough when you’re dealing with foreign governments that heavily subsidize their industries.

Stopping offshoring will help America’s economy & the environment. No doubt about it.

http://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/04/21/automation-job-loss/

[RayChuang88]

I think what we'll see is much more emphasis on solar power and the arrival of far more safer forms of nuclear energy, especially the molten-salt reactor fueled by commonly-available thorium-232. This will lead to such an excess of electrical power generated that things like truly large scale electric car usage, electrifying all of our long-distance rail lines and large-scale seawater purification becomes really viable, which means way cleaner air and the Sahara Desert and the outbacks of Australia no longer desert but viable farmland.

[exnavy]

This planet will be here just as long as the good Lord allows it to be.

[Wuli]

Utopian hogwash.

The arrogant technologists will continue to comprise larger chunks of the 1%ers, the Middle Class will shrink further and the underclass will grow.

The technocratic society will be less altruistic and less egalitarian and with income and wealth spread even less harmoniously.

Human beings are going to reject being drones to the technocrats.

[mrsmith]

If we can kill enough babies, this will work fine. And that’s the plan.

“Be fruitful and multiply” is so simple, yet we won’t.

[BenLurkin]

From 1979

(I still have the paperback around here somewhere, I think)

[equaviator]

The Planet does not need us to save it. The Planet is not going anywhere. It’s us that needs saving...We’ll be long gone and The Planet will carry on as though we were never even here. So there!

[Ozark Tom]

Thorium is slightly radioactive, but does not support a chain reaction. Placed inside a fission reactor, it can be started down a path of successive changes that result in production of a fuel.

https://indico.cern.ch/event/222140/contributions/1528898/attachments/363090/505441/Daniel_Mathers_v2_ThEC13.pdf

[spintreebob]

the country’s 13th Five-Year plan

Apparently the first 12 Five-Year plans worked so well we are in the current situation.

I hear the USSR has a couple un-used 5 year plans. You can never have too many 5 year plans.

[oldtech]

” we face climate change that’s taken us into the sixth extinction wave in the history of the planet, and the last time that happened was 65 million years ago.” So for those of us who don’t believe the earth is anywhere near 65 million years old,I guess none of this ever happened.

[Lisbon1940]

If you could increase the eight to, say, 12, all these inequality arguments would be settled.