The greenhouse crisis is the bill coming due for the Industrial Revolution. It's not an accident. It's the logical outcome of our world view - the idea that we can control the forces of nature, that we can have short-term expedient gains without paying for them, that there are no limits to exploitation of the environment, that we can produce and consume faster than nature's ability to replenish.
Jeremy RifkinThe antitrust litigation currently in the federal courts in the U.S. against Monsanto will be the test case in the life sciences, just as the Microsoft case was the test case in the information sciences.
Jeremy RifkinA half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being's worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world where much of life is lived on the Collaborative Commons.
Jeremy RifkinBack in the mid-1980s, congressional hearings were held after we brought this litigation, and held up the first experiment. At that time, I went in front of Congress, along with the major agencies involved with this.
Jeremy RifkinWe need a game plan to deploy it very quickly to both move the economy forward and create the new businesses and jobs, and address climate change. It's a pretty big task. Pretty challenging.
Jeremy Rifkin