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b'Jeremy Rifkin President, Foundation on Economic Trends; Author, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy and Changing the World The world is doomed to repeat four-year cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don\\u2019t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin warns in this Climate One talk. The solution, what he calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the \\u201cEnergy Internet,\\u201d a nervous system linking millions of small renewable energy producers. For Rifkin, author of the new The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy and Changing the World, a seminal event occurred in July 2008, when the price of oil hit $147 a barrel. \\u201cPrices for everything on the supply chain went through the roof, from food to petrochemicals. Purchasing power plummeted all over the world that month. An entire economic engine of the Industrial Revolution shut down,\\u201d he says. \\u201cThat was the great economic earthquake,\\u201d he goes on. \\u201cThe collapse of the financial markets 60 days later was the aftershock. Our world leaders are still dealing with the aftershock, and have not gone to the nub of the crisis.\\u201d The reason this is happening now, Rifkin says, is that the \\u201cworld is made out of and moved by fossil fuels.\\u201d \\u201cEvery time we try to re-grow the economy at the same growth rate we were growing before July 2008, the price of oil goes up, all of the other prices goes up, purchasing power goes down, and it collapses.\\u201d This is a wall we can\\u2019t go beyond under the current energy regime, he says. \\u201cWe\\u2019re in this wild gyration of four-year cycles, where we\\u2019re going to try to re-grow, collapse, re-grow, collapse.\\u201d The solution is a plan based on five pillars, which is being implemented in the European Union: 1) Renewable energy targets: such as the EU\\u2019s 20% by 2020 mandate 2) Green buildings: over the next 40 years, Europe plans to convert its 191 million buildings into energy-efficient, micro power plants 3) Energy storage: batteries, flywheels, and hydrogen used to smooth the intermittency of renewables 4) \\u201cEnergy Internet\\u201d: create a central nervous system so that buildings can talk to the grid and sell or store power depending on prices 5) Plug-in electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. \\u201cThis is power to the people,\\u201d he says. \\u201cThis is the democratization of energy.\\u201d This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 3, 2011\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'