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Jeremy Rifkin (born January 26, 1945) is an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist. Rifkin is the author of 23 books about the influence of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. His most recent books include The Age of Resilience (2022), The Green New Deal (2019), The Zero Marginal Cost Society (2014), The Third Industrial Revolution (2011), The Empathic Civilization (2010), and The European Dream (2004).
Rifkin is the principal architect of the "Third Industrial Revolution" long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change. The Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) was formally endorsed by the European Parliament in 2007.
The Huffington Post reported from Beijing in October 2015 that "Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has not only read Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Third Industrial Revolution, but taken it to heart", he and his colleagues having incorporated ideas from this book into the core of the country's thirteenth Five-Year Plan. According to EurActiv, "Jeremy Rifkin is an American economist and author whose best-selling Third Industrial Revolution arguably provided the blueprint for Germany's transition to a low-carbon economy, and China's strategic acceptance of climate policy."
Rifkin has taught at the Wharton School executive education program at the University of Pennsylvania since 1995, where he instructs CEOs and senior management on making a transition of their business operations into sustainable economies. Rifkin is ranked number 123 in the WorldPost / The Huffington Post 2015 global survey of "The World's Most Influential Voices". He also is listed among the top ten most influential economic thinkers in the survey. Rifkin has lectured before many Fortune 500 companies, and hundreds of governments, civil society organizations, and universities over the past thirty five years.
Rifkin was an active member of the peace movement. He attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (MA, International Affairs, 1968) where he continued anti-war activities. Later he joined Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).
In 1973, Rifkin organized a mass protest against oil companies at the commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party at Boston Harbor. Thousands joined the protest, as activists dumped empty oil barrels into Boston Harbor. The protest came in the wake of the increase in gasoline prices in the fall of 1973, following the OPEC oil embargo. Later, this was called a "Boston Oil Party" by the press.
On April 17–18 the group camped out at Concord Bridge, Massachusetts to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Minute Men's 1775 fight with the British which marked the beginning of our independence and according to White House documents, attempted to disrupt an appearance by President Gerald R. Ford where he was to lay a wreath at the Minute Man Statue. https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0067/7580533.pdf
On July 4, 1976, the People's Bicentennial Commission staged a rally on the Capitol Mall as an alternative to the other Bicentennial celebrations. https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0067/1563322.pdf
In 1977, with Ted Howard, he founded the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET), which is active in both national and international public policy issues related to the environment, the economy, and climate change. FOET examines new trends and their effects on the environment, the economy, culture, and society, and it engages in litigation, public education, coalition building, and grassroots organizing activities to advance their goals. Rifkin became one of the first major critics of the nascent biotechnology industry with the 1977 publication of his book, Who Should Play God?
In 1978, Jeremy Rifkin and Randy Barber co-authored the book The North Will Rise Again: Pensions, Politics, and Power in the 1980s. The book and subsequent activist engagement by the authors with the American Labor Union movement, the financial community, and civil society organizations helped spawn the era of socially responsible investment of public and union pension funds in America. An article on socially responsible investment in the New York University Review of Law and Social Change noted that "the idea of socially responsible investing, long a concern of only special interest groups, achieved widespread attention in 1978 with the publication of Jeremy Rifkin and Randy Barber's The North Will Rise Again." The book helped lay the early groundwork for what later would evolve into the principles of environment, society, and governance (ESG) standards in investments.
In 1980, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of granting a patent on the first genetically engineered life form with 5 justices favoring the patent and 4 justices opposed. Jeremy Rifkin's office - The People's Business Commission - provided an amicus curiae brief in support of the US Patent and Trademark Office, arguing that extending patents to genetically-engineered organisms was not covered by US patent law. Speaking on behalf of the majority opinion, Chief Justice Warren Burger referred to the petitioners' briefs as "the gruesome parade of horribles" and argued that "the relevant distinction was not between living and inanimate things, but between products of nature, whether living or not, and human-made inventions". Speaking for the minority opinion, Justice William Brennan argued that "it is the role of Congress, not this court, to broaden or narrow the reach of patent laws" and further suggested that "the composition the sought to be patented uniquely implicates matters of public concern".
On May 16, 1984, Federal District Judge John J. Sirica issued a ruling halting an experiment that would have involved the "first deliberate release into the environment of organisms altered by gene splicing". The court suit was brought by Jeremy Rifkin, the President of the Washington DC–based Foundation on Economic Trends. The plaintiff argued that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to undergo an assessment of the potential risks and consequences of releasing the genetically engineered organism into the environment before "giving the testing a green light". The journal Science recorded that the ruling "stunned most observers". In his ruling, Judge Sirica said that Rifkin and his legal counsel "had made a satisfactory showing that they are likely to succeed" in their lawsuit. In the meantime, Science reported that Judge Sirica told NIH "not to approve any more experiments by academic researchers involving release of modified organisms". The court ruling was credited with beginning the process of regulating the release of genetically engineered organisms into the environment in the United States and around the world.
In 1989, Rifkin brought together climate scientists and environmental activists from 35 nations in Washington, D.C., for the first meeting of the Global Greenhouse Network. In the same year, Rifkin did a series of Hollywood lectures on Climate change and related environmental issues for a diverse assortment of film, television, and music industry leaders, with the goal of organizing the Hollywood community for a campaign. Shortly thereafter, two Hollywood environmental organizations, Earth Communications Office (ECO) and the Environmental Media Association, were formed.
Also in 1989 Rifkin, with a group of environmentalists, attempted to prevent the launch of a NASA rocket that was expected to lift the Galileo space probe, claiming it carried a "very high risk" of explosion and "spraying deadly plutonium" over the territory of the USA. The lawsuit was eventually rejected, and the Galileo mission succeeded.
That same year, Rifkin and the Foundation on Economic Trends launched the Pure Food Campaign to demand government labeling of all genetically engineered foods. The campaign was spearheaded by more than 1,500 of the nation’s leading chefs.
In 1993, Rifkin launched the Beyond Beef Campaign, a coalition of six environmental groups including Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and Public Citizen, with the goal of encouraging a 50% reduction in the consumption of beef, arguing that methane emissions from cattle has a warming effect 23 times greater than carbon dioxide.
His 1995 book, The End of Work, is credited by some with helping shape the current global debate on automation, technology displacement, corporate Layoff, and the future of jobs. Reporting on the growing controversy over automation and technology displacement in 2011, The Economist pointed out that Rifkin drew attention to the trend back in 1996 with the publication of his book, The End of Work. Then The Economist asked "what happens... when machines are smart enough to become workers? In other words, when capital becomes labor." The Economist noted that "this is what Jeremy Rifkin, a social critic, was driving at in his book, "The End of Work," published in 1996... Mr. Rifkin argued prophetically that society was entering a new phase, one in which fewer and fewer workers would be needed to produce all the goods and services consumed. 'In the years ahead,' he wrote, 'more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilization ever closer to a near-workerless world. The process has already begun."
His 1998 book, The Biotech Century, addresses issues accompanying the new era of genetic commerce. In its review of the book, the journal Nature observed that "Rifkin does his best work in drawing attention to the growing inventory of real and potential dangers and the ethical conundrums raised by genetic technologies... At a time when scientific institutions are struggling with the public understanding of science, there is much they can learn from Rifkin's success as a public communicator of scientific and technological trends."
In The Biotech Century, Rifkin argues that 'Genetic engineering represents the ultimate tool.' 'With genetic technology we assume control over the hereditary blueprints of life itself. Can any reasonable person believe for a moment that such unprecedented power is without substantial risk?'Rifkin, Jeremy, The Biotech Century: the coming age of Genetic Commerce (London, 1998), p. 36. Some of the changes he highlights are: replication partially replacing reproduction; and 'Genetically customized and mass-produced animal clones could be used as chemical factories to secrete—in their blood and milk—large volumes of inexpensive chemicals and drugs for human use.'Rifkin, Jeremy, The Biotech Century: the coming age of Genetic Commerce (London, 1998), p. 2
Rifkin's work in the biological sciences includes advocacy of animal rights and animal protection around the world.Rifkin, Jeremy, “Man and Other Animals: Our Fellow Creatures Have Feelings – So We Should Give Them Rights Too,” in The Guardian (16 August 2003).Rifkin, Jeremy, Video for the Stop Vivisection campaign (10 July 2013). Transcription: “Opinion Piece on Stop Vivisection - Moving Beyond Animal Experimentation Across the European Union,” in Equivita.it.
Rifkin published the book The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth in 2002. That same year, Mr. Rifkin, who at the time served as an advisor to Romano Prodi, then President of the European Commission, developed a strategic white paper committing the European Union to a multi-billion Euro research and development plan that would transform the EU into a green hydrogen economic paradigm. Mr. Rifkin joined Prodi at a European Union conference in October 2002 to announce "a coordinated long-term plan for Europe to make the transition from fossil-fuel dependency to become the first "hydrogen economy" superpower of the 21st century". President Prodi remarked that the EU hydrogen R&D initiative would be as significant for the future of Europe as the space program was for the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s.
After the publication of The Hydrogen Economy (2002), Rifkin worked both in the U.S. and Europe to advance the political cause of renewably generated hydrogen. In the U.S., Rifkin was instrumental in founding the Green Hydrogen Coalition, consisting of 13 environmental and political organizations (including Greenpeace and MoveOn.org) committed to building a Hydrogen economy.
His 2004 book, The European Dream, was an international bestseller and winner of the 2005 Corine International Book Prize in Germany for the best economics book of the year. In its review of the book, BusinessWeek noted that "Rifkin makes a compelling case for the vision, which he says is usurping the American Dream as a global ideal … a fascinating study of the differences between the American and European psyches."
In 2009 Rifkin published . In a review of the book in the Huffington Post, Ariana Huffington writes: “Rifkin is that rare breed, one whose disappearance is often and rightly bemoaned: a public intellectual. Rifkin… takes a look at the new scientific discoveries that lead to the conclusion that rather than being naturally aggressive, acquisitive, and self-involved, humans are ‘a fundamentally empathic species’ -- what Rifkin calls Homo empathicus… The Empathic Civilization is a fascinating book that boldly challenges the conventional view of human nature and seeks to replace that view with a counter-narrative that allows humanity to see itself as an extended family living in a shared and interconnected world.”
Rifkin delivered a keynote address at the Global Green Summit 2012 on May 10, 2012. The conference was hosted by the Government of the Republic of Korea and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), in association with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea also gave a speech at the conference and embraced the Third Industrial Revolution to advance a green economy.
In December 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that the newly-elected premier of China, Li Keqiang is a fan of Rifkin and had "told his state scholars to pay close attention" to Rifkin's book, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World.
Rifkin received the America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation in 2012. He currently works out of an office in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
In November 2015, the Huffington Post reported from Beijing 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 announced in Beijing on October 29th." The Huffington Post went 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."
Jeremy Rifkin is the executive co-producer and star of a feature-length documentary film produced by VICE Media entitled The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy. The film, subtitled in nineteen languages, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017, and has been live on YouTube since 2018. As of May 2023, the film had been viewed 8 million times.
That same year, the European Commission and its president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the European Green Deal, a plan to make Europe "the first climate neutral continent in the world" by 2050. The European Commission presented a spectrum of proposals, projects, and initiatives under the rubric of "Leading The Third Industrial Revolution", signaling a fundamental transformation of the European economy and society.
The America 3.0 infrastructure transformation 2022-2042 details a massive investment to scale, deploy, and manage a smart digital zero-emission Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure for a 21st century economy. The plan will create an average of 15 to 22 million net new jobs over the period 2022 to 2042. For every dollar invested, it is projected to return $2.90 in GDP between 2022 and 2042.
The Bloomberg article noted that "For almost two decades the U.S. author and climate activist Jeremy Rifkin has advised governments in Europe and China on how to retool their economies for what he calls a third industrial revolution."
Rifkin also provided the economic and environmental commentary in the fifth and final episode of the BBC documentary series A Perfect Planet, starring Sir David Attenborough.
In a profile article in 1989, TIME Magazine called Jeremy Rifkin the "most hated man in science" and the "nation's foremost opponent of environmental neglect... Rifkin is surely justified in seeking precise regulations for genetic research, to protect the health of the individual and the environment. ... But there is good reason to question the fairness of Rifkin's angriest assaults on scientists as mad magicians and unethical disciples of Dr. Strangelove. When Rifkin is most successful, he may slow basic research, delay a medical advance, perhaps even damage the economy."
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