Renewable Energy

I’ve been reading a great book by visionary economist Jeremy Rifkin, called “The Third Industrial Revolution.” He says in 30 years, every house and every building will be its own power plant, with wind or solar energy, and there will be an intelligent grid like the internet to distribute the power. In the process, 1000s of jobs will be created and carbon emissions drastically reduced. And ‘power,’ will become less vertical ‘top down’ and more horizontal/community/collaborative.

Rifkin has met with every head of state in the Europe Union, which has already put in place many of these plans. As usual, the US is far behind, but there is surprisingly a lot more going on in the US with renewable energy than we hear about in the media, which tends to focus on the negatives. Every page of Rifkin’s book has another interesting anecdote or solution. I highly recommend reading this book, which is the most optimistic view I’ve read on the subject in years. Rifkin has written 19 books translated into 30 languages!