Point of view of Jeremy Rifkin on a global Green New Deal

We [humans] are the most sociable creatures. (...) Empathy is programmed into our neural networks. We must have empathy for life on earth, for the biosphere that has given us life. (...)

Scientists tell us we are living through the sixth mass extinction of life on earth, caused by fossil fuel civilisation. Over the next eight decades, we could lose half of all the living species that populate our planet. History shows that, whenever there is a mass extinction, it takes 10 million years for new life to appear.  We need to wake up and move from fossil fuels to the post-carbon era. We need to make this transition in a single generation.

We need the banking system to provide us with a reference framework. (...)

All of you who are involved in this struggle every day, when your grandchildren look at you and ask, “What did you do?”, you want to be able to answer, “I committed, along with my employer, (…) to completely transform how we use the money available to us – all those thousands of billions of dollars of savings representing all the world’s workers”. I want to be able to say I played a key role – through my bank and my employer – in helping my community transition to an environmentally friendly civilisation. A Green New Deal.

^{@ Photo credit : Michael Krees}

› You can see the video interview (four parties).

The Inevitable Collapse of the Fossil Energy Civilization

A Green New Deal to transform Society

Role and power of banks in disengaging fossil fuels

A need for collective awarenes