- 1 giorno fa
In una lunga conversazione con Riccardo Luna, Jeremy Rifkin - economista tra i più influenti a livello globale - traccia le nuove rotte della vita sul Pianeta Acqua di fronte alle sfide imposte dalla crisi climatica e dal declino del «paradigma estrattivo». L'autore propone un nuovo modello culturale fondato sull'acqua e su una cooperazione globale che superi le maggiori ideologie del Novecento. Una conversazione nata dal suo intervento all'Assemblea Anci a Bologna: occasione in cui Rifkin ha incontrato, tra gli altri, il cardinale Matteo Maria Zuppi.
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00:00So, Jeremy, after the Venice Water Declaration in June, you were back in Italy, and your favorite country, you repeat all the time.
00:08What is the wrap-up of your visit in Italy? What are you taking back in your country after three days in Italy?
00:15You know, I've spent the last 30 years in Europe, and a lot of it's been in Italy.
00:21I think I've been in every province and gotten together with every prime minister, so I'm very familiar with it.
00:27I love the country, actually.
00:28Anyway, my sense is that Italy is a cultural landmark.
00:36It is responsible for so many of the themes and narratives that then become part of our civilization, the Renaissance being a classic example.
00:45But a more modern example, of course, is the European Union.
00:51It was Spinelli, I believe while he was in prison.
00:53I was in prison.
00:54He said, and this is very interesting for today, he says, as bad as this looks, everyone's killing each other.
01:01It's a geopolitical war.
01:03And as bad as it looks, there's a vision after this.
01:06And that vision seems strange to everyone, that we can take two centuries of these nation-states, which are figment institutions.
01:17They don't exist historically.
01:19But after the peace of Westphalia and the Enlightenment, nation-states were developed, and they were territorial.
01:27They weren't based on environment or ecosystems.
01:29They were simply territorial, they were colonial.
01:32And their design was to make a fiction.
01:35And that is to bring together all sorts of subcultures under the aegis of ideology and nation-state governance.
01:45For example, very few people in their mouth, France, were French.
01:49There were many languages, Italy, everywhere, Germany.
01:53So they were fictional.
01:54And what they, and they were geopolitical, and they were colonial, and they then sought territories all over the world.
02:03That was the persona for two centuries that went hand in hand with the Industrial Age, the Age of Progress, and nation-state sovereignty.
02:14All right?
02:14That's all falling apart now.
02:16It's completely falling apart.
02:18And people aren't recognizing it, but what's happening now is real-time climate change on the one hand,
02:25and on the other hand, a completely new technology revolution that is as different as you can imagine from traditional capitalists and socialist models.
02:35Let's talk about what happened in Bologna for these three days.
02:38For instance, you had the opportunity to meet with Cardinal Zuppi.
02:42What's your takeaway about the meeting here with Cardinal Zuppi?
02:47Well, my first takeaway is that this is a new Vatican, starting with Francis.
02:55This is a new Vatican, because I've spent time with the Cardinal Zuppi priest over the years.
03:01This is a Vatican that's engaged with the real life, not only human life, the life of the communities in which we live.
03:11We have to remember, it was the Pope Francis who actually surprised the whole world and said,
03:16look, we're going to have an ecological, environmental world view here, that we are part of the creation, and it includes all our fellow creatures.
03:26We all live together in each of our creatures, our ecosystems, our biomes, our ecotomes.
03:32Ecotomes, it's all connected.
03:35Everything relates to everything else.
03:37And so this was a bold thing, because for really since the beginning of the church to now, it's been mainly the great chain of being.
03:46It's been more extractive.
03:48It's been more ethereal.
03:50This is a Franciscan, Jesuit, kind of an operation now.
03:56The fact that when I met the Cardinal, and I had heard about him before, he's out there every week on the streets.
04:03Yeah.
04:04That's what St. Francis is.
04:05I mean, literally, it's not just for show.
04:07That's what he likes.
04:08He has his bike.
04:09He's out on the streets.
04:10He's delivering services.
04:12He's chatting with people.
04:14This is a different Vatican than I grew up with.
04:18Sure.
04:18I remember one time, well, I won't go into this, but this is a different Vatican, and it's so rewarding to see this.
04:29We're talking about a good portion of the human race here, and what's really important is that the developing world with Catholicism is really taking off.
04:37So, when I met with him the other day, the Cardinal, he's just a good guy.
04:45I don't know what more.
04:46And he's smart as hell.
04:47Yeah.
04:48And he's intuitive, and he's intellectually sophisticated, and he has no sense of any kind of being special.
04:58Okay.
04:58I'll send this message.
04:59No, I immediately like it.
05:00Okay.
05:01I'll send the message to the Cardinal, and then, after a long time, you had the opportunity to reconnect with your long-time friend, Romano Prodi.
05:10Romano and I go way back, way back in the 1990s.
05:14It was just a great breakfast.
05:16Good to see him.
05:18He's still got it.
05:19There's still something boiling for the future with you two together?
05:24Well, I think that we seem to come to the same ideas around the same time over the last 20 years.
05:30Yeah, but you're much more optimistic and is more pessimistic about the future.
05:34Well, I think he has a clear understanding that we are in an end stages for a geopolitical world.
05:41It's falling apart.
05:43It's falling apart for several reasons.
05:46Most importantly, it's climate change.
05:48And what's happening now is that from a geopolitical level, this idea of these sovereign territorial states coming together in a global infrastructure, a geopolitical world to begin to create a commercialized civilization, it's over.
06:10It was over in 2008 because just before July of 2008, I was in the Paris suburbs.
06:17We brought together, I was just one of about, there was about 15 people, the heads of all of the postal operations and those who dealt with, you know, moving shipments.
06:29And we were all in this little, beautiful little farm area.
06:37We all sat down and looked at each other and everyone was saying, oh my God, there was nothing moving in the ports, July 2008.
06:45There was nothing moving in the shipyards, nothing.
06:48It was like there was no air.
06:51And the reason was, oil hit $147 a barrel that month.
06:56This was the month before.
06:57You should have seen everyone's faces.
06:58This was the beginning of the endgame.
07:00So I can ask you something about my new book, which is, something went wrong.
07:06In your opinion, what went wrong with the digital revolution?
07:11Something went wrong?
07:13Oh, the AI revolution?
07:15Social networks and the...
07:16There's a misunderstanding of AI, of where it's going to be used.
07:22You have a handful of giant operations that came to be during the third industrial revolution.
07:30It wasn't what Bernard Lee designed.
07:32Bernard Lee said, I want to create a global communication network where everyone at the periphery can address each other directly and you have no referees at the center.
07:41And because the third industrial revolution, I first mentioned it in the first page of the end of work in 95, we saw the internet coming in with something.
07:50And then after that, we saw what was beginning after that.
07:54It was Romano and I put together a multibillion dollar effort for that long-term hydrogen economy.
08:01Then we did the 2020 formula, 20 formula, got the solar and wind down so that you had market incentives to move it in.
08:08And then we began to see electric vehicles coming in and hydrogen vehicles.
08:13So all of that was step by step.
08:15Now, what happened is we're still in a geopolitical frame of vertically integrated large companies who dominate the planet.
08:25And there's only, there's 500 of these companies.
08:29I, I taught many of these CEOs in the advanced manager, probably the world.
08:33Some of them are friends.
08:34Some of them are in our group.
08:36But these 500 companies are one third of the GDP of the entire world.
08:41They only have 65 million employees, these 500 companies.
08:44Isn't it a problem?
08:45It's amazing.
08:47And so, and the 10 richest people on that pyramid have more wealth than half the human race.
08:52This is the extractive revolutions final.
08:54Now, what's happening geopolitically is very, very interesting.
09:00This third industrial revolution is now, all the blocks are putting together.
09:06Because the great revolutions in history, paradigm shifts, are very simple and they're not in any textbook.
09:12I mean, I've read them in my book, but who's reading that book?
09:16But it's, when you look back, when we look back at history in 2001, when we began this work in Europe, I took an anthropological look.
09:24And I said, the workbook we've got, that we're using, is the workbook that set up all the tragedy we've got.
09:33So, the Enlightenment, the Age of Progress, the Industrial Age, then finally these great global institutions like the World Bank, the OECD, the IMF, the UN.
09:43Fine.
09:44But that playbook is what took us to the crisis.
09:48That's what no one seems to want to talk about.
09:51You can't then use that same playbook to be able to solve the crisis.
09:55That's why even environmental groups, academia, they're stuck in some ways.
10:03On the other hand, they are freeing themselves from it, but they don't have the narrative.
10:06If they're doing it, they just don't have the narrative, which would allow them to be able to be more, if you will, global, global.
10:14So, the bottom line is this.
10:18All the great economic paradigm shifts, all the great, excuse me, all the great infrastructure shifts in history have shared a common denominator.
10:27Every paradigm shift, it's all the same.
10:30Five technologies emerge.
10:32It's serendipitous.
10:34It isn't like somebody came up with the idea.
10:36They just emerge.
10:38And some of it is serendipitous.
10:39So, you have new communication revolutions, and they converge around the same time with new energy regimes, and both converge at the same time with new mobility logistics.
10:48And then they all converge at the same time with water, because water is crucial to the others.
10:53And then they all combine with new approaches to habitats.
10:57Sure.
10:57And so, what's interesting about this, you look at the first industrial revolution in the 19th century in Britain, they did it.
11:06Their communication revolution was steam power printing, no more manual print presses, big leap.
11:12And then in the last half of the century, they introduced the telegram system, instant communication.
11:16Their energy revolution was they depleted the forest, there was no more firewood.
11:20So, they dug up the burial grounds of the carboniferous there and took out the coal, dead bodies, coal.
11:26The mobility revolution, the railroad, they put the steam engine on rails.
11:30And the water revolution, they were the first since the fall of the aqueducts in Rome to put in water systems.
11:38And that created urban life, railroads, you have dense urban life, you have national markets, you have vertically integrated big companies, because no monarchy could afford to do all this.
11:50Sure.
11:50That was the shtick.
11:5220th century, second industrial revolution, U.S.
11:54Alexander Graham Bell gave us the communication, telephone, 20 years, we got it all done.
12:01The energy revolution, we struck oil in Texas.
12:04We didn't need to rely just on coal anymore.
12:07The mobility revolution, Henry Ford stole the Daimler engine.
12:11I worked with Daimler's, you know, I was just with the past chairman, he just retired.
12:16He, Daimler makes a better car, but we make a cheaper car, right?
12:20Then the internal combustion engine went to river, ocean, and air traffic.
12:27And then the habitat revolution was suburban life, because we had highways and automobiles.
12:34This went to globalization, and this went to global governing institutions, the World Bank, the OECD, the IMF, the U.S., and it peaked.
12:44After 2008, it's been an endgame.
12:46It's gone.
12:48Oil goes over 100 barrels each time, everything shuts down, because everything's made from fossil fuels.
12:52What's happening now, beginning in the 90s with Bernard Lee and the Internet, then it went from communication, everybody's got a cell phone, 4.5 million people, and that's distributed.
13:05This is what's different.
13:06This is not centralized, it's lateral, not vertically integrated.
13:09Everyone has a cell phone, 4.5 billion.
13:12And they got more power at near zero marginal cost than our astronauts to the moon, computers.
13:18Everyone's got the number two, which is solar and wind.
13:21There's millions and millions of players harvesting solar and wind.
13:25It's distributed, and then they can send it back to the grid.
13:28Number three, mobility, electric and fuel cell vehicles.
13:32Electric vehicles are here, fuel cell are coming in the next five years.
13:35It's distributed.
13:36If you have power, you can send it back to the grid.
13:39Then you take a look at the water.
13:42Right now, there are thousands, there are going to be millions of micro water grids, because the water molecules never disappear.
13:48Sure.
13:48They're here forever.
13:50But they're changing when they come down and what depth.
13:54So we've got to use millions of micro water grids, collect the water, digitize it, distribute it locally and regionally.
14:01Then finally, after the water, you've got the habitats.
14:06And it's all going to be 3D printed out.
14:09So those are some of the basics.
14:11So everything is going to change for the better.
14:14That's your opinion.
14:15So the Silicon Valley, as we know it, is going to collapse within the next 20, 30 years, you said today.
14:22The banks all know this.
14:23We've got bank studies, European bank studies.
14:25They're suggesting, for example, that ocean and air traffic is going to be with 3D printing, additive info factoring.
14:34And it knocks out manufacturing.
14:35And you just send the software around the world.
14:37No tariffs.
14:38That's what they don't get.
14:39There's going to be no tariffs if you're already doing it.
14:41I have two more questions before we end.
14:43So today, you had the opportunity to deliver a speech to the Italian mayors at the ANSI Assembly.
14:49And you talked to them about the new paradigm that we should embrace, the planet aqua.
14:54And you talked to them about the Venice Climate Week.
14:57Why the next Venice Climate Week can be so important to affirm your vision?
15:03Why can...
15:04What?
15:04Venice?
15:04Yeah.
15:05Venice Climate Week.
15:06The next one.
15:07Well, what's interesting, look, I love Venice.
15:11My wife hasn't been there many times.
15:12We took part of her honeymoon there.
15:14It's the oldest water city in the world.
15:16If there's any city that could say we're a planet aqua city, it's Venice.
15:21All right.
15:21They know.
15:22And they know how to live with the waters as a life source, not just a resource.
15:27All right.
15:27So I think what happened in Venice was very important historically.
15:32The fact that the mayoral government there said, look, we're passing blue deal resolution now,
15:38which says we need a blue deal to go with the green deal.
15:42And we need to begin to understand that we live on planet aqua.
15:45And we want to call on our fellow mayors all over Italy and across Europe to join in this initiative.
15:53That's a beginning.
15:54The mayors and the city councils of Italy are ready to make this shift.
16:00And this shift is fundamental.
16:03What's keeping us is that when we think of living on a land planet, we think of everything as being extractive.
16:10You can take everything.
16:12It's just things.
16:13It's not part of an animated plant.
16:15They see the rare metals and they think, okay, that's just a thing.
16:20They see the water.
16:21That's a thing.
16:23They see some good forest land.
16:25That's a thing.
16:26What they don't understand is these are not things or substances.
16:30These are living arrangements.
16:33The hydrosphere is attached to the lithosphere.
16:39No hydrosphere, no lithosphere.
16:41Because without the waters, you don't have the soil.
16:45Without the hydrosphere waters, you don't have the atmosphere because the phytoplankton in the waters go up and they create the oxygen.
16:51Without the hydrosphere, you don't have the biosphere.
16:53So what we're seeing is a shift from the idea that the planet is a resource to be extracted, prodified, propertied, commodified, and then used.
17:04Now we're moving to what we call an animated.
17:07The planet's animated.
17:08It's a lie.
17:09So what do you wish to happen the next Manus Climate Week?
17:12Like a summit of the mayors, a new resolution, a European summit?
17:17What's your desire for this successful book that you wrote about Planet Aquan?
17:22I think the bottom line is cultural.
17:25This is a cultural shift after 2,000 years in Western civilization.
17:30The Eastern religions and philosophy are a little bit better on understanding that we live in an animated planet.
17:36They have raged away from it somewhat in the last 25 years, but it's in every family.
17:44Every family, it's in their DNA cultural code.
17:47So we strayed, but now what's happening is the hydrosphere is telling us what's going to happen.
17:57It's no longer us telling the hydrosphere.
17:59We spent 90% of the time on this planet, our species, 300,000 years.
18:03We adapted to the waters.
18:04We understood it.
18:05Now, what's happening now is that the waters are rewounding because fossil fuels are generating increasing temperatures.
18:15And we have floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, and the whole infrastructure is being destroyed.
18:21Human lives taken.
18:23Ecosystems wiped out.
18:24People are so frightened, they just are pretending it's not happening.
18:28Even in countries everywhere now, no one's talking about it anymore because they don't know there's another way to live.
18:36So the key here is to say to folks, well, you know what?
18:40We live on a planet that's alive, and it's alive because it's water, and we didn't find any other planet like that.
18:46We don't know why the first single-celled organism came, but we know it had to do with water.
18:52Other planets may have water, but they don't have the right conditions.
18:57Maybe they don't have a star that's close enough or far enough.
19:01It's a one in a trillion billion chances that there'd be another water, Earth-like, planet-like ours.
19:07And what's so interesting is that the waters on our planet had been here all the way since almost the beginning of the universe.
19:15The beginning of the universe.
19:16They came down here in asteroids.
19:18They'd been here for four billion.
19:20And those little water molecules in our body, if it's as close to immortality as we can come, it almost hits the Big Bang.
19:26So if you're going to treasure anything, it's that we are actually the only experiment in the universe
19:33where the waters have come together with the electromagnetic fields.
19:38And that first single-celled organism in the deep came into being.
19:43And from there, it's history.
19:45This is such an incredible, amazing, fascinating thing.
19:49If people only knew what I was talking about, the excitement would be enormous.
19:52Today, the audience at the ANSI assembly was excited.
19:57I can tell you, the mayors were thrilled about your speech.
20:00I wish we had waited a few minutes because then they only had about, what, 60% of their chairs.
20:05So, final question.
20:10New York, as not only a new mayor, as a new socialist mayor, you think the economic program of Zoran Mandani is realistic or not?
20:21As an economist, it's not a political question.
20:24The issue is, between capitalism and socialism, both of these institutional arrangements are wedded to an extractive revolution
20:37in the sense that we see the planet as things to extract, maybe take care of them, but to extract and use their things.
20:45So, what socialism attempts to do is try to even things out a little bit more so that those are responsible for the making of these systems
20:53get their fair share.
20:55But whether you're talking about Adam Smith, whether you're talking about Adam Smith or Karl Marx,
21:02they live within the same structure we've had for 2,000 years, since ancient Greece.
21:08So, that's the way Western civilization's been.
21:12China and Asia just came in at the last minute, at the end of that, and have moved very quickly,
21:18but they're going to have to make the shift, too.
21:20Because the worldview we're talking about is, how do we understand that we live in a water planet
21:26that is unique because it creates life, and those molecules are virtually immortal,
21:34and without water, we're gone.
21:36So, what I want to see is, when every little child says to mommy and daddy, five-year-olds, they all do,
21:44what is this place?
21:46I want mommy and daddy to say to that little five-year-old,
21:49sweetie, you live on planet aqua.
21:51So, what I want to see is, starting in Venice, starting with the mayors of this and the city councils of Italy,
21:58I would like to see them, in all their codes, regulations, and standards in every city,
22:04to formally announce that they are a planet aqua city, in their codes, regulations, and standards, and bylaws,
22:12and everything they do is within that context.
22:14That will change the whole cultural paradigm after several thousand years.
22:19And it can be done within one generation.
22:22So, Jeremy, the interview is over.
22:24Thank you so much.
22:24I have only one question with a reply, yes or no.
22:28But you can say nothing, and we cancel it.
22:32And you live in Virginia.
22:34Well, we live in D.C., and we have an environmental farm in Virginia.
22:39Okay.
22:40If you were a citizen of New York City, would you have voted for Zoran Madami or for Cuomo?
22:47Well, for the Republican candidate, I don't know.
22:51I won't comment on it, because it's just too long a conversation.
22:54But look, I'm for people getting their fair share.
22:58But we need something much more fundamental.
23:01And what happens with these situations is, because of the way the economic system is set up,
23:07and the way the governance is set up, what we did is just some conversations about whether,
23:12okay, why are the very rich there and the very poor are being screwed, basically.
23:19It has to be much more different than that.
23:21We have to go into a world where it's cooperative, where it's on the commons, where it's shared.
23:26So, it's kind of sad that a younger generation thinks, well, it's anti-growth.
23:33There's no such thing as anti-growth.
23:34Or we have to be able to get fair housing.
23:40It's the system.
23:41Socialism is a system like capitalism.
23:44It just tries to get the goodies more shared by everyone else.
23:50So, they need to go beyond that.
23:53And the last thing I would say is, I learned this lesson when the Gen Zs were out on those
24:00Friday for future demonstrations.
24:03Millions of kids leaving high school on Friday, in the streets, climate emergency.
24:09And what I learned, I was in Milan.
24:11I thought, okay, they're good, they're demonstrating, that's a good thing.
24:14I was in Milan with three of these young people.
24:16And then it dawned on me.
24:17It was a big, big dawn.
24:20These weren't like any demonstrations in history.
24:23There's been demonstrations.
24:24Remember, after the first millennium, there were people marching all over Europe, okay?
24:28We'd like to demonstrate.
24:29This was so different.
24:31But they didn't understand why the next step was.
24:35This is the first time an entire generation across all the boundaries, across ideological boundaries,
24:40religious boundaries, saw themselves as an endangered species.
24:44They saw their fellow creatures, biophilic, as part of the family.
24:49They were beginning to understand an animated planet.
24:52But they didn't know how to articulate it.
24:54It was just kind of...
24:56And then it went back to capitalism versus socialism.
24:58Thank you, Jeremy.
25:00See you in Venice next year.
25:01Thank you.
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