Jeremy Rifkin

Economic and Social Theorist.

Advisor to the European Union and Heads of State around the World. President of the Foundation on Economic Trends.

Jeremy Rifkin speaker, conferencias, wharton school
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Jeremy Rifkin is an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist. Rifkin is the author of 20 bestselling books about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. The books have been translated into more than 35 languages. His most recent books include the international bestsellers, The Zero Marginal Cost Society (2014), The Third Industrial Revolution (2011), The Empathic Civilization (2010), The European Dream (2004), The Hydrogen Economy (2002), The Age of Access (2000), The Biotech Century (1998), and The End of Work (1995).

Jeremy Rifkin has been an advisor to the leadership of the European Union since 2000. He has advised three presidents of the European Commission – Romano Prodi, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the current President, Jean-Claude Juncker – as well as the European Parliament, and numerous EU heads of state, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, on the ushering in of a smart green Third Industrial Revolution economy.

Mr. Rifkin’s New York Times bestselling book, The Third Industrial Revolution, provided the blueprint for the economic transition to a post-carbon ecological society across the European Union. According to The European Energy Review, “perhaps no other author or thinker has had more influence on the EU’s ambitious climate and energy policy than the famous American ‘visionary’ Jeremy Rifkin.” In the words of Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, Jeremy Rifkin “is the economic and ecological worldwide ambassador of the energy transition… Rifkin presents a grand scenario for the future: a visionary approach unlike anyone has dared to put forward in the last fifty years that will boost our thinking and help with our orientation.”

Mr. Rifkin is also advising the leadership of the Peoples Republic of China on the build out and scale up of the Internet Plus Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure to usher in a sustainable low-carbon economy. The Huffington Post reported from Beijing on October 29th, 2015 that “Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has not only read Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The Third Industrial Revolution, and taken it to heart, he and his colleagues have also made it the core of the country’s thirteenth Five-Year Plan…” The Huffington Post goes on to say that “this blueprint for China’s future signals the most momentous shift in direction since the death of Mao and the advent of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up in 1978.”

According to EurActiv, “Jeremy Rifkin is an American economist and author whose best-selling The Third Industrial Revolution arguably provided the blueprint for Germany’s transition to a low-carbon economy, and China’s strategic acceptance of climate policy.”

Mr. Rifkin is a principal architect of the European Union’s long term Third Industrial Revolution economic vision and development plan to usher in an Internet of Things digital infrastructure across the European Union and its partnership regions to create a smart post-carbon economy, ecological society, and the world’s largest single integrated economic marketplace. The plan is called “Smart Europe.”

On January 31st 2017, the European Union launched the digital Third Industrial Revolution Smart Europe economic modernization plan with a conference hosted by Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, called “Into the Future: Europe’s Digital Integrated Market.” Mr. Rifkin delivered a keynote address on transforming the European Union into a smart Third Industrial Revolution paradigm.

Mr. Rifkin also served as an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, and Prime Minister Janez Janša of Slovenia, during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. He has also spent time advising the European Parliament, and several EU heads of state, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain.

The Third Industrial Revolution Smart Europe long-term economic development plan was formally announced by Maros Sefcovic, Vice President of the European Commission, Markku Markkula, President of the Committee of the Regions, and Jeremy Rifkin on February 7th 2017. Mr. Rifkin is currently advising the European Commission on the deployment of the Smart Europe initiative and will be working with the 350 formal regions of the EU in the creation of road maps to deploy the new economic narrative and vision across Europe.

Mr. Rifkin is the President of the TIR Consulting Group, LLC comprising many of the leading renewable energy companies, electricity transmission companies, engineering companies, construction companies, architectural firms, ICT and electronics companies, transport and logistics companies, advanced manufacturing companies, and economic modelers. His global economic development team is working with cities, regions, and national governments to develop the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure for a Collaborative Commons and a Third Industrial Revolution. The TIR Consulting Group LLC is currently working with the regions of Hauts-de-France, the Metropolitan Region of Rotterdam and The Hague, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in the conceptualization, build out, and scale up of a smart Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure to transform their economies.

Mr. Rifkin is ranked 123 in the WorldPost / HuffingtonPost 2015 global survey of “The World’s Most Influential Voices.” Mr. Rifkin is also listed among the top 10 most influential economic thinkers in the survey. The survey was prepared at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and used collective intelligence to correlate the rankings.

Since 1995, Rifkin has lectured at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania where he instructs CEOs and senior management on transitioning their business operations into sustainable economies.

The Third Industrial Revolution and a Zero Marginal Cost Society.

The Global Economy is in crisis. Economists warn that we face another 20 years of declining productivity, slow growth, steep unemployment, and increasing inequality. The economic downturn is fueling growing discontent toward governing institutions and spawning extreme political movements around the world. And now, after 200 years of industrial activity, scientists report that climate change is ravaging the planet, taking us into the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth. Where do we go from here?

The Great Economic Revolutions in History.

The Water Energy Nexus.

Zero Marginal Cost and the Rise of the Sharing Economy.

The Renewable Energy Internet.

A New Consciousness for a New Era.

Rethinking Employment in an Automated Economy.

A Biosphere Trade Agreement

THE GREEN NEW DEAL

An urgent plan to confront climate change, transform the American economy, and create a green post-fossil fuel culture.

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 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, 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.

THE GREEN NEW DEAL

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism.

In The Zero Marginal Cost Society, New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin describes how the emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism.

Rifkin uncovers a paradox at the heart of capitalism that has propelled it to greatness but is now taking it to its death―the inherent entrepreneurial dynamism of competitive markets that drives productivity up and marginal costs down, enabling businesses to reduce the price of their goods and services in order to win over consumers and market share. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing additional units of a good or service, if fixed costs are not counted.) While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring marginal costs to near zero, making goods and services priceless, nearly free, and abundant, and no longer subject to market forces.

Now, a formidable new technology infrastructure―the Internet of things (IoT)―is emerging with the potential of pushing large segments of economic life to near zero marginal cost in the years ahead. Rifkin describes how the Communication Internet is converging with a nascent Energy Internet and Logistics Internet to create a new technology platform that connects everything and everyone. Billions of sensors are being attached to natural resources, production lines, the electricity grid, logistics networks, recycling flows, and implanted in homes, offices, stores, vehicles, and even human beings, feeding Big Data into an IoT global neural network. Prosumers can connect to the network and use Big Data, analytics, and algorithms to accelerate efficiency, dramatically increase productivity, and lower the marginal cost of producing and sharing a wide range of products and services to near zero, just like they now do with information goods.

The plummeting of marginal costs is spawning a hybrid economy―part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons―with far reaching implications for society, according to Rifkin. Hundreds of millions of people are already transferring parts of their economic lives to the global Collaborative Commons. Prosumers are plugging into the fledgling IoT and making and sharing their own information, entertainment, green energy, and 3D-printed products at near zero marginal cost. They are also sharing cars, homes, clothes and other items via social media sites, rentals, redistribution clubs, and cooperatives at low or near zero marginal cost. Students are enrolling in free massive open online courses (MOOCs) that operate at near zero marginal cost. Social entrepreneurs are even bypassing the banking establishment and using crowdfunding to finance startup businesses as well as creating alternative currencies in the fledgling sharing economy. In this new world, social capital is as important as financial capital, access trumps ownership, sustainability supersedes consumerism, cooperation ousts competition, and "exchange value" in the capitalist marketplace is increasingly replaced by "sharable value" on the Collaborative Commons.

Rifkin concludes that capitalism will remain with us, albeit in an increasingly streamlined role, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a powerful niche player in the coming era. We are, however, says Rifkin, entering a world beyond markets where we are learning how to live together in an increasingly interdependent global Collaborative Commons.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism.

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World.

The Industrial Revolution, powered by oil and other fossil fuels, is spiraling into a dangerous endgame. The price of gas and food are climbing, unemployment remains high, the housing market has tanked, consumer and government debt is soaring, and the recovery is slowing. Facing the prospect of a second collapse of the global economy, humanity is desperate for a sustainable economic game plan to take us into the future.

Here, Jeremy Rifkin explores how Internet technology and renewable energy are merging to create a powerful "Third Industrial Revolution." He asks us to imagine hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories, and sharing it with each other in an "energy internet," just like we now create and share information online.

Rifkin describes how the five-pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships, from hierarchical to lateral power, that will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.

Rifkin's vision is already gaining traction in the international community. The European Union Parliament has issued a formal declaration calling for its implementation, and other nations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, are quickly preparing their own initiatives for transitioning into the new economic paradigm.
The Third Industrial Revolution is an insider's account of the next great economic era, including a look into the personalities and players ― heads of state, global CEOs, social entrepreneurs, and NGOs ― who are pioneering its implementation around the world.

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World.

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