Jeremy Rifkin’s “Green New Deal”

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In Berlin the government has a hard time to grab your climate package, in front of the Chancellery environmentalists protest against the pusillanimity of the policy – the American Economist Jeremy Rifkin know exactly how to do it.

Climate problems – Paris under Smog

The man is so optimistic, as an American, it may be only, and so the environment moves like a young European woman named Greta Thunberg. The US Economist Jeremy Rifkin is 74 years old, and he has made once again, a century is a problem. Office Solution Proposal. The enforcement was ambitious steps to offer to the climate change, so far as a direct attack on the economic rationality, as Rifkin says today: “The fossil energy built-up civilization will likely collapse anyway in order to the year 2028 around.” And Rifkin adds to the DW is also the same, why: “Because now the market speaks.”

What “the market” has exactly to say where it goes to the end of the previous kind of energy procurement, performs Rifkin in a book, which he presented in Germany: “The global Green New Deal”. Listening to Rifkin, has made as a policy Advisor and economically accomplished future researchers a name; his ground-breaking work about the “end of work” by the emerging digitization is now twenty years old.

Economist Jeremy Rifkin

The turn of the market operates

Now, therefore, the question of energy and the market. Also Rifkin looks natural, “that it’s hard for people to imagine that we break the fossil energy civilization to stand in front of a together, we are 200 years have lived”. But, he adds, compared to DW: “this year, the cost for solar and wind energy are less than the costs for nuclear, Oil and coal and even for Gas.” We experienced, so Rifkin, now a large bubble that was formed by “stranded investments in the fossil energy industry”.

The Numbers Rifkin in his latest book – even if the development goes sometimes faster than the printed paper lovers like to be. Thus, the share of renewable energies was the world in 2017, in three per cent. But Rifkin insists on the growth rate, which was crucial. And with a share of 14 percent renewable of all energy sources, a tipping point was reached. The collapse of an economy based on fossil energy, run the market.

The market for Rifkin, not least, the major U.S. pension Fund. You are with investment sums of more than 41 trillion dollars in the year 2017, from his point of view, a much more promising player in the energy transition away from fossil fuels, simply because it pays to the renewable energies.

Climate protests here in Dublin

Time is of the essence – such as the protesters at “Friday or Future,” says Rifkin to DW: “We have twelve years to our civilization to rebuild, or we stand in front of a uncontrollable climate change.” Because of the climate-author, knows the results of climate research in line speaks. Rifkin also says: “This is a scary Moment, but it is also an opportunity.” Not about his catchphrase from the “New Green Deal” is reminiscent of the former “New Deal”: In the thirties of the last century, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt with his “New Deal” caused a way out of the global economic crisis, including through huge investment programs for energy and infrastructure.

“The cities get into the game”

Now the US President, Trump is, and likes to do other than save the climate. The Economist Rifkin relies on other actors. “The market is a powerful player,” said Rifkin in an interview with DW. “But that’s not enough.” You need for the new time, a new infrastructure, and because the public sector is asked: “As cities get into the game, the regions come into play.” Of nation States, the speech is not in the case of Rifkin so often he considers large areas, such as the USA, EU-Europe, or China. Or the municipal level.

“The public sector is in demand,” Cabinet meeting in Berlin

“Governments need to provide the designs for the new infrastructure, and you have to include the municipal level in the process of transformation.” Maybe it is what Chancellor Angela Merkel means when she says the views of the German climate package: “politics is what is possible.” The people take, is to say something in the language Policy.

For Rifkin, it is clear that, conversely, sometimes protests like the climate movement, the policy “must” take and show “what is possible”. Rifkin: “It is justified that the boys go on the road and your parents say: I Can live on this planet? Will we be able to survive this?” The author is an Optimist: “We have the instruments for a third Industrial Revolution; the technology; and the market speaks, the prices of it,” said Rifkin to DW show: “The Business models are.”

The Interview with the Economist and book-author Jeremy Rifkin led DW-Reporter Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann.