Oil Era’s Twilight Drives Depression, Debt Crisis, Rifkin Says

[GliderGuider]

Oil Era’s Twilight Drives Depression, Debt Crisis, Rifkin Says

The world economy will face shocks and depressions, punctuated by ever-shorter and weaker recoveries, as long as it relies on outdated fossil fuels, says Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Third Industrial Revolution. “There will be cycles of growth, collapse, growth, collapse, every three years or so,” he said in an interview in Berlin, where he was scheduled to speak on a panel about sustainable growth introduced by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The real crisis has been missed,” he said. “It occurred in July 2008, when oil hit $147 a barrel. The whole economic system shut down. That was the earthquake. The collapse of the financial market 60 days later was the aftershock.”

All industrial revolutions occur, he argues, when technological advances in communications and energy converge. The first industrial revolution combined literacy and printing with steam power and rail. The second brought us the telephone, the internal combustion engine and oil. That era is dying, he said, and it’s not just the economy that is reeling from the carbon age, but the climate and biosphere too.

“We are at the beginning of a mass shift in the chemistry of the planet,” he said. “Our species has never experienced anything like this and we’re not grasping it at all.” He doesn’t rule out the end of civilization as we know it, unless we get our act together.

[dkf]

1. But infrastructure is more important right?

Transitioning off oil is imperative and we needed to make it first second and third priority but it's barely on our horizon.. The shortsightedness drives me nuts.

[Kolesar]

2. infrastructure ? eom