A sweeping new interpretation of the history of civilization and a transformative vision of how our species will thrive on an unpredictable Earth.

The viruses keep coming, the climate is warming, and the Earth is rewilding. Our human family has no playbook to address the mayhem unfolding around us. If there is a change to reckon with, argues the renowned economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin, it’s that we are beginning to realize that the human race never had dominion over the Earth and that nature is far more formidable than we thought, while our species seems much smaller and less significant in the bigger picture of life on Earth, undermining our long-cherished worldview. The Age of Progress, once considered sacrosanct, is on a deathwatch while a powerful new narrative, the Age of Resilience, is ascending.

In The Age of Resilience, Rifkin takes us on a new journey beginning with how we reconceptualize time and navigate space. During the Age of Progress, efficiency was the gold standard for organizing time, locking our species into the quest to optimize the expropriation, commodification, and consumption of the Earth’s bounty, at ever-greater speeds and in ever-shrinking time intervals, with the objective of increasing the opulence of human society, but at the expense of the depletion of nature. Space, observes Rifkin, became synonymous with passive natural resources, while a principal role of government and the economy was to manage nature as property. This long adhered to temporal-spatial orientation, writes Rifkin, has taken humanity to the commanding heights as the dominant species on Earth and to the ruin of the natural world.

In the emerging era, says Rifkin, efficiency is giving way to adaptivity as the all-encompassing temporal value while space is perceived as animated, self-organizing, and fluid. A younger generation, in turn, is pivoting from growth to flourishing, finance capital to ecological capital, productivity to regenerativity, Gross Domestic Product to Quality of Life Indicators, hyper-consumption to eco-stewardship, globalization to glocalization, geopolitics to biosphere politics, nation-state sovereignty to bioregional governance, and representative democracy to citizen assemblies and distributed peerocracy.

Future generations, suggests Rifkin, will likely experience existence less as objects and structures and more as patterns and processes and come to understand that each of us is literally an ecosystem made up of the microorganisms and elements that comprise the hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. The autonomous self of the Age of Progress is giving way to the ecological self of the Age of Resilience. The now worn scientific method that underwrote the Age of Progress is also falling by the wayside, making room for a new approach to science called Complex Adaptive Systems modeling. Likewise, detached reason is losing cachet while empathy and biophilia become the norm.

At a moment when the human family is deeply despairing of the future, Rifkin gives us a window into a promising new world and a radically different future that can bring us back into nature’s fold, giving life a second chance to flourish on Earth.

Après avoir théorisé la Troisième Révolution industrielle (La Troisième Révolution industrielle, LLL, 2012), Jeremy Rifkin s’attaque à la notion de « New Deal Vert ». Il s’agit d’un projet économique et de société, fruit d’une prise de conscience mondiale sur l’état de la planète. Le but : sauver la vie sur Terre, tout simplement.

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.

Après le succès de La troisième révolution industrielle (plus de 40 000 exemplaires vendus), Jeremy Rifkin présente ici ce que sera la société collaborative de demain. Le prospectiviste de génie y dessine un nouveau paradigme favorisé par l’essor des nouvelles technologies : les communaux collaboratifs. 

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.

I virus prendono il sopravvento, il clima si riscalda e la Terra si sta rinaturalizzando. Abbiamo a lungo pensato di poter costringere il mondo naturale a adattarsi alla nostra specie e ora siamo costretti a adattarci noi a un mondo naturale imprevedibile. Questo mette in discussione la concezione del mondo a cui siamo da tempo affezionati. E, di fronte al caos che si sta dispiegando intorno a noi, ci ritroviamo senza una valida strategia.

Il noto teorico dell'economia e della società Jeremy Rifkin ci invita quindi a un radicale ripensamento della concezione del tempo e dello spazio. Perché, come osserva in questo libro, l'Età del Progresso, un tempo considerata sacrosanta, è ormai al tramonto, mentre una nuova e potente narrazione è in ascesa: l'Età della Resilienza.

Durante l'Età del Progresso la regola aurea era l'efficienza, che ci imprigionava nell'incessante sforzo di ottimizzare l'espropriazione, la mercificazione e il consumo dei doni della Terra, con l'obiettivo di accrescere l'opulenza della società umana, ma al prezzo del depauperamento della natura. Nella nuova era, invece, l'efficienza sta cedendo il passo all'adattività portando con sé profondi cambiamenti nell'economia e nella società. La generazione più giovane, a sua volta, si sta riorientando dalla crescita alla prosperità, dal capitale finanziario al capitale ecologico, dalla produttività alla rigeneratività, dal prodotto interno lordo agli indicatori della qualità della vita, dall'iperconsumo all'ecogestione, dalla globalizzazione alla glocalizzazione, dalla geopolitica alla politica della biosfera, dalla sovranità dello Stato-nazione alla governance bioregionale e dalla democrazia rappresentativa alle assemblee di cittadini.

In un momento in cui la famiglia umana guarda con angoscia al futuro, Rifkin ci apre una finestra su un nuovo e promettente mondo e su un futuro radicalmente diverso che può offrirci una seconda opportunità di prosperare sulla Terra.

Una nuova visione sul futuro dell'umanità sta rapidamente guadagnando slancio. Di fronte a un'emergenza climatica planetaria, una giovane generazione sta promuovendo un dibattito sull'ipotesi di un Green New Deal e dettando il programma di un audace movimento politico capace di rivoluzionare la società. Sono i Millennial a farsi carico del problema del cambiamento climatico.

Se il Green New Deal è diventato un tema fondamentale nella sfera politica, nel mondo delle imprese sta emergendo un movimento parallelo che nei prossimi anni scuoterà le fondamenta dell'economia globale. Settori chiave dell'economia si stanno prontamente sganciando dai combustibili fossili a favore dell'energia solare ed eolica, più a buon mercato e accompagnate da nuove opportunità di business e occupazione. Nuovi studi stanno suonando l'allarme: migliaia di miliardi di dollari in combustibili fossili per i quali non esiste più un mercato potrebbero creare una bolla suscettibile di scoppiare entro il 2028, provocando il crollo della civiltà dei combustibili fossili. Il mercato sta parlando e i governi, se vogliono sopravvivere e prosperare, dovranno adattarsi.

In questo libro Jeremy Rifkin, autore bestseller del «New York Times» e famoso teorico dell'economia, espone il pensiero politico e il piano economico per il Green New Deal di cui abbiamo bisogno in questo momento critico. La convergenza fra la bolla dei combustibili fossili fuori mercato e una visione politica verde apre la possibilità di un passaggio a un'era ecologica post carbonio, in tempo per prevenire l'aumento della temperatura che ci farebbe superare il limite oltre il quale tornare indietro diverrebbe impossibile. Con venticinque anni di esperienza nel promuovere cambiamenti simili a questo nell'Unione europea e nella Repubblica popolare cinese, Rifkin presenta la sua visione su come rivoluzionare l'economia globale e salvare la vita sulla Terra.

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.