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Wharton Leader
Jeremy Rifkin, W’67
 Jeremy Rifkin wants to focus on his message, not
himself as the messenger. When the topic is as critical
as the future of the human race, it’s no wonder
that the influential economist/philosopher would
rather disarm his critics and focus on the bigger picture.
“It’s a race against time,” he said, referring to the
issue of climate change during a wide-ranging conversation.
He spoke with Wharton Alumni Magazine at the
Steinberg Conference Center, the home of Wharton
Executive Education, where he has been a fellow and
lecturer in the Advanced Management Program since
1994. Rifkin is also the president and founder of the
Washington, DC-based Foundation on Economic
Trends, the bestselling author of 17 books on technology,
labor, and globalization including The End of Work,
The Age of Access, and The Biotech Century, and a columnist
whose views are published worldwide in The Los
Angeles Times, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung,
L’Espresso, and El País. The National Journal named
Rifkin as one of 150 people in the U.S. who have the
most influence in shaping federal government policy.
Rifkin cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, the group of 2,500 scientists that shared the
2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore, “By their calculations the whole
world has seven years to get the right game plan to
deal with climate change, and there can be no mistakes.
We have to think of this as a global emergency and
ourselves as homo sapiens and not let geopolitical forces
get in the way.”
So first, Rifkin wants to make it clear that he’s not a
technophobe. How could he be, when he believes that
technological innovation is the only means to solve the
pressing issues of fossil fuel dependence, global warming,
and famine?
Rifkin first became prominent in the 1970s as a vocal
opponent of recombinant DNA research and genetic
bioengineering; his 1977 book on the subject, Who
Should Play God?, seeded skepticism against the industry,
which led to increased regulation. A 2000 article in the
Virginia Journal of Law and Technology tracing Rifkin’s
impact claimed that he “arguably single-handedly raised
the consciousness of the American public, and indeed
the world, to potential risks of the technology.” His
activism can be traced back to his time at Penn during
the mid-1960s when the Wharton student/fraternity
member/cheerleader protested against the University’s
participation in germ warfare research. From there, he became active in the peace movement, helping to organize
the 1968 March on the Pentagon against the Vietnam War,
before tackling broader power relations in a world driven by
techno-capitalism.
“I’ve been very critical of technology,” said Rifkin.
“There are some technologies I like and some I don’t. I look
at technologies in terms of the human story. This third
industrial revolution is a human story.”
The third industrial revolution to which he refers is the
adoption of a distributed renewable energy network that
uses hydrogen fuel cells for energy storage, as described in
his 2002 book, The Hydrogen Economy. Rifkin believes that history’s most significant changes occur when societies
rework their energy regimes and reorganize their communication
systems around them.
“The convergence of new energy and communications
systems are pivotal points in human history,” he explained.
He believes the distributed communication system of the
Internet must now be translated into a distributed energy
regime.
“What is a distributed energy compared to the elite
energies, oil, coal, gas, and uranium? Elite energies are the
ones you don’t have in your backyard, so they require huge
geopolitical organizations and military investments,” he said.
“Distributed energy is found in your backyard – the sun, the
wind, hydro for dams, garbage that can be turned into energy,
agricultural or forestry wastes if you’re in a rural area,
ocean waves if you’re on the coast, geothermal deposits.
“When you and I and millions of people generate our
own power with renewable energy, we store it using fuel
cells, and then the surplus we don’t need we send back to
an inter-grid, just as we produce our own information and
share it on the Internet.”
In the U.S., Rifkin was instrumental in founding the
Green Hydrogen Coalition, a group of 13 environmental
and political organizations (including the Sierra Club and
Greenpeace) committed to renewable hydrogen. In Europe,
he helped build consensus among European Parliament
members, leading to a 2005 commitment to convert the
European Union to a green hydrogen economy. One
notable convert is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who
Rifkin helped convince to create a 500 million euro program
to move Germany into the lead in the third industrial
revolution. He has also advised the current president of the
European Union, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal,
Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy, Prime Minister Jose
Zapatero of Spain, and members of the U.S. Senate.
Rifkin circled the conversation back to the custom executive
education class he was teaching to a group of highlevel
automotive executives. “I asked my class today, ‘Look,
where do you want to position your company in 15 years?
Do you want to be in the sunset energies and industries of the second industrial revolution, or do you want to be in a
transition to the sunrise energies of the third industrial revolution?’
It becomes very clear when business leaders hear
that. It’s about their bottom line, but they’re beginning to
realize the bottom line is about their children too. There has
to be a balance between margins now and the future of the
human race.”
The long-time activist sees a change in business culture
since he graduated from Wharton and Tufts University’s
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he earned a
master’s degree in international affairs.
“Then, there were very few people challenging the corporate
framework. There was Ralph Nader, and later there
was me with biotech,” he said. “Now things have changed.
Younger business people have grown up with the idea of
sustainable business and corporate social responsibility.
Now the idea of challenging the conventional wisdom is
coming from the business community itself. We have corporate
leaders who realize that business is embedded in all the
relationships that make up human civilization.”
— Kelly J. Andrews
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