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Biophilia or love of nature must light the way
By Xiao Wang |
March 16, 2013, Saturday
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IF there's one word to describe a better future for mankind, that word is biophilia.
American economist Jeremy Rifkin, author of The New York Times bestseller "The Third Industrial Revolution," says education in biophilia - love of nature - is a must if mankind means to move from the previous two industrial revolutions - powered by plundering of the planet's finite energy - to the third one - propelled by solar, hydraulic and other clean energy.
"If we are to survive and prosper as a species, we will need to rethink our concepts of space and time," he says. "The most difficult task in the transformation from the Second to a Third Industrial Revolution is conceptual rather than technical in nature."
Indeed, many countries or cities have seen steady progress in developing clean energy. For example, General Motors' factory in Aragon, Spain, generates electricity from its rooftop solar plant for nearly 5,000 households.
Rifkin acknowledges that technical breakthroughs have yet to be made in commercial storage of solar and wind power, but he says technical hurdles are secondary compared with conceptual ones.
The current educational system in the West - and much of the rest of the world, for that matter - is outdated, he says. It's associated with the previous two industrial revolutions - the first marked by steam engines and railways in the 19th century and the second marked by the automobile and the oil era in the 20th century.
This educational system trains people to be isolated and autonomous. To this I will add that the system misleads people to believe that man will be nature's master, not its servant or friend.
Can students across the globe be nudged from computerized classrooms perched above nature to classrooms in the fields? The author doesn't seem to have an answer, but he makes a strong case in that reality will be the answer.
"Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting," he warns. "Energy regimes shape the nature of civilization."
Indeed, as people fought and still fight for finite and unevenly distributed energies like oil, competition at the expense of nature can only be the way of life. But now that man is forced to eventually rely on clean energy that's largely infinite and evenly distributed, he has come a long way to ponder biophilia.
In fact, it's not that difficult to draw ourselves back to nature. Even the West, origin of the industrial revolutions, experienced biophilia in medieval times. China had biophilia for thousands of years until it was forced to "awaken" to Western gunboat power.
The thing is that industrial revolutions have falsely elevated man's status over nature for too long for most of us to be humble again. But as Rifkin argues convincingly in his book, the age of man's arrogance is over, and the time of biophilia has come.
American economist Jeremy Rifkin, author of The New York Times bestseller "The Third Industrial Revolution," says education in biophilia - love of nature - is a must if mankind means to move from the previous two industrial revolutions - powered by plundering of the planet's finite energy - to the third one - propelled by solar, hydraulic and other clean energy.
"If we are to survive and prosper as a species, we will need to rethink our concepts of space and time," he says. "The most difficult task in the transformation from the Second to a Third Industrial Revolution is conceptual rather than technical in nature."
Indeed, many countries or cities have seen steady progress in developing clean energy. For example, General Motors' factory in Aragon, Spain, generates electricity from its rooftop solar plant for nearly 5,000 households.
Rifkin acknowledges that technical breakthroughs have yet to be made in commercial storage of solar and wind power, but he says technical hurdles are secondary compared with conceptual ones.
The current educational system in the West - and much of the rest of the world, for that matter - is outdated, he says. It's associated with the previous two industrial revolutions - the first marked by steam engines and railways in the 19th century and the second marked by the automobile and the oil era in the 20th century.
This educational system trains people to be isolated and autonomous. To this I will add that the system misleads people to believe that man will be nature's master, not its servant or friend.
Can students across the globe be nudged from computerized classrooms perched above nature to classrooms in the fields? The author doesn't seem to have an answer, but he makes a strong case in that reality will be the answer.
"Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting," he warns. "Energy regimes shape the nature of civilization."
Indeed, as people fought and still fight for finite and unevenly distributed energies like oil, competition at the expense of nature can only be the way of life. But now that man is forced to eventually rely on clean energy that's largely infinite and evenly distributed, he has come a long way to ponder biophilia.
In fact, it's not that difficult to draw ourselves back to nature. Even the West, origin of the industrial revolutions, experienced biophilia in medieval times. China had biophilia for thousands of years until it was forced to "awaken" to Western gunboat power.
The thing is that industrial revolutions have falsely elevated man's status over nature for too long for most of us to be humble again. But as Rifkin argues convincingly in his book, the age of man's arrogance is over, and the time of biophilia has come.
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