Jeremy Rifkin on Europe's Uncertain Future
 
Europe's Next Industrial Revolution

The world may be on the brink of another industrial revolution -- and Europe is leading the way. A combination of network communications and hydrogen power may usher in a whole new era of civilization.

AP California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tanks up the first hydrogen Hummer in California. In the future, hydrogen cars could not only power themselves, but also homes and a national power grid.

Just look back at ancient Iraq, to Sumeria. It was the first large scale agricultural society. Organizing an agricultural energy regime was complicated and required a new kind of communications regime to coordinate it. The Sumerians created cuniform -- the first form of written communication. The printing press became the communication modality for the era of the steam engine, coal and rail. After all, you couldn't have organized the Industrial Revolution with codex or oral culture. You had to have print to keep it all managed. The telegraph and telephone became the control mechanism for the internal combustion engine and oil in the 20th century. In the 1990s, we had a great new communications revolution: decentralized mobile communications -- linking together of personal computers, via the World Wide Web, satellites and wireless technologies.

What I have been suggesting to political and business leaders is that this 1990s communications revolution is the command and control mechanism for the hydrogen economy. The new hydrogen energy grid would network millions of individual energy producers -- each with their own fuel cell -- using the same types of technology used on the Internet. You have to imagine everyone having a fuel cell 20 years from now -- and every car would be a power plant on wheels. Portable fuel cells will be out in three years; you will use them on your cell phone. You will have stationary fuel cells at home and we could have as many fuel cells as we have PCs. With these fuel cells, you are your own power plant. And by linking up to a national energy grid, we will be able to create energy and exchange it with other people in the same way we now create and share information will millions of people using PCs and the Web.

 

This third Industrial Revolution won't be able to absorb all the lost jobs, but the building of its infrastructure over the next 25 years would require the creation of millions of new jobs. Germany is a leader in automobile manufacturing, construction, the chemical industry, engineering, banking and insurance. It has everything it needs to actually become the world leader in creating a hydrogen economy.

This transformation will help provide a buffer for some job losses in the short term, but in the longer term, we have a bigger problem: we need to shift vocations out of the market sector. Just think about all the high tech advances coming on in this 21st century. Do we really think we need billions of people toiling away, making goods and services when intelligent machine technologies can do the work and produce the goods and services more efficiently and cheaper?

The growth of the third sector

In addition to the opportunities created by the hydrogen economy, there is also tremendous opportunity in the third sector, non-profit organizations. Upwards of 40 percent of all the new jobs created during the past 10 years in many of the EU's 15 most advanced countries, including Germany, have been in the non-profit sector. The key to the third sector is that people are helping to build social capital -- whether it be in sports, the arts, civic society, social justice and the environment. These are all things you can't do with machines -- machines may help the sector become more efficient, but they can't replace people. The potential exists for millions of jobs in this sector.

One might ask: How do you finance these jobs? This is where people misconceptualize the nature of the third sector. They say, 'Wait a minute, it's parasitic, it relies on government grants and private philanthropy. How can this be a sector that creates new jobs?' Actually, a recent Johns Hopkins University study showed that more than 50 percent of the income in the non-profit sector in the 22 countries studied comes from fees for services.

We need to do more to stimulate this third sector: Since the 1930s we have trained generation after generation of economists to use fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate the market. Why not train the economist now to use fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate the third sector? The sector would create social capital, generate fees for services, and begin to move some employment out of a market sector that is overburdened.

There has to be a new conversation about automation. The substitution of mass human labor with increasingly sophisticated intelligent technology should be viewed as a great triumph for modern science and technology, and for humanity -- now we can actually free people from the marketplace. This won't happen right away, it will take generations. In the meantime, we have to dramatically increase productivity, shorten the work week, push for a hydrogen economy and a Third Industrial Revolution and create new job opportunities in the civil society.