The Third Industrial Revolution
This is an offshoot of "Global Warming or Carbon Cult?" In that discussion, Robert Tulip said that a failure of imagination or of bold thinking occurs when we try to contemplate how to meet the challenges of providing energy for our highly materialistic societies. We get stuck in our current paradigms. I think he's probably right, even though I disagree that that the imaginativeness and boldness should be directed toward a single energy panacea, as he seems to advocate. But visionaries are needed. Jeremy Rifkin is nothing if not visionary. I heard him on the Kojo Naamde radio show today, speaking about his new book,
The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (Palgrave Macmillan 2011). It was only 10 minutes from the broadcast, but what he said about reducing carbon pollution was striking.
Although not against large generating facilities that will produce power remotely and deliver it to buildings, he believes that buildings, which are the number one source of carbon emissions (followed by the livestock industry and transportation), should themselves be power plants, using passive and active solar as well as wind, geothermal, and other means to be self-sufficient and even net "exporters" of energy. The man has an easy brilliance about him. I'd like to hear what else he has to say.
An excerpt from the book is here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-ri ... 64049.html
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