12-13 June 2008, European Parliament, Brussels

…this is how Professor Jeremy Rifkin – President of Foundation on Economic Trends and author of several visionary books – opened his keynote speech in front of 500 representatives of the civil society in the European Parliament’s Hemicycle in Brussels.

At the sunset of the petrol era, ‘we are at the threshold of the third industrial revolution’ – shares his vision Professor Rifkin – where energy will be produced from renewables; collected on buildings as power plants and stored in forms of hydrogen that can be used for fuelling our cars or fed into distributed smart-grids. Similarly to the Internet revolution, in a post-carbon era a radical decentralisation would take place and energy would be produced locally and shared ‘peer-to-peer’ in distributed networks.

First commitments in the EU towards a low carbon, sustainable future were made in March 2007. Commission President, Jose-Manuel Barroso stressed that the musical ‘20-20-20 goals by 2020’ represent a unique political consensus in the EU and go well beyond CO2 emission reductions and burden sharing.’ One year on, when it comes to delivering on these sound goals though, political leaders – pressured by largest emitter heavy industries – loose of their enthusiasm. However, ‘when Australia ratified Kyoto and US election candidates give the right signals acting on climate change, the EU should not give a signal of weakness of its determination’ – urged Barroso.

The European Parliament has shown its determination and established last year a Temporary Committee on Climate Change. ‘We should not miss the boat when it comes to this third industrial revolution’ argued Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament…’Solidarity is not a one way street: it is not only about sharing economic burdens, but preparing the future for all of us.’

Indeed, we should radically change our rhetoric both on the local, EU and International levels. Professor Rifkin stressed, if we do not manage to reorient the climate change and energy agenda from burden-sharing to commercial opportunities, it is most likely that the Copenhagen Climate Summit will fail – with untold consequences to civilization…

Ultimately, this is a question of the human nature: could we enjoy today great inventions such as light-bulbs, if Edison would have been discouraged by his thought: ‘Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.’ /Thomas A. Edison/

Let’s get inspired by today’s opportunity and IMAGINE a brighter future together!

Kristina Dely
Project Manager