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  • All over the world

  • millions of young people took to the streets.

  • and they were joined by their parents' generation

  • and their grandparents' generation.

  • and they spoke with a single voice

  • and what they said was clear and compelling:

  • "It's our turn. We're a new generation. We want a new vision for the future."

  • "There's something unfair in the way this world is organized."

  • Why is it there are no jobs for young people?

  • Why is it that the economy is collapsing?

  • Why is it that this beautiful planet that we live in is deteriorating

  • and we are now threatened as never before?

  • We are ending a great industrial era based on fossil fuels.

  • When oil went up to $147 dollars a barrel a few years ago on world markets

  • all the other prices in the world went up

  • because everything is made out of fossil fuels-

  • pesticides, fertilizers, construction materials,

  • power, transport, heat, light-all of it.

  • First we need to understand that the second industrial revolution based on fossil fuels

  • is now sunsetting.

  • The energies are getting too expensive- coal, oil, gas, uranium-

  • and now the technologies based on those energies, they're very old

  • They have no multiply effect.

  • The entire infrastructure of this civilization based on these carbon fuels

  • is now on life support.

  • Fossil fuels are the most elite energies in the world.

  • They're not found everywhere, they're only found in a few places.

  • So they require huge military investments to secure them.

  • They require massive finance capital from banks

  • to organize them from the well-head to the final user.

  • The result is the second industrial revolution has created a top-down, centralized

  • energy regime and economic structure unparalleled in history.

  • and today, at the end of this second industrial revolution

  • 3 of the 5 largest companies in the world are global energy companies

  • and underneath these companies are the large banks that finance

  • this second industrial revolution energy infrastructure

  • and underneath the banks are 500 or so global companies

  • who feed off the oil spigot

  • from telecommunications to transport.

  • and when we put this all together it's shocking to realize

  • that these 500 companies

  • make up a third of the GDP of the entire world.

  • So we've created this very very centralized, elite

  • second industrial revolution energy and technology infrastructure

  • and now as we end this age in history

  • one percent of the population that's controlled this pyramid

  • has benefited immensely and 99 percent of the population

  • that's at the bottom of this pyramid has been disenfranchised and is getting poorer and poorer

  • What do we do?

  • We need a new way to organize society

  • based on justice, equity, and sustainability.

  • When communication and energy revolutions come together

  • they change economic history

  • they change the way power is distributed.

  • We're on the cusp of a great new communications/energy convergence

  • a third industrial revolution.

  • and what is so interesting about the internet

  • is that this electricity communication is very different from the one I grew up on in the 20th century

  • I grew up on telephones, radio, television

  • centralized, organized, top-down

  • by contrast, the internet revolution is organized very differently.

  • It's distributed, it's collaborative.

  • Millions of young people come together in vast networks and they exercise

  • Lateral Power.

  • This internet communications revolution is just now

  • beginning to merge with a new energy regime

  • and we transform the entire electricity grid of the world

  • to an energy internet

  • so when millions and millions of buildings are collecting green energy on site

  • storing that energy in hydrogen like we stored media in digital

  • and then if you don't need some of that energy and some of your neighbors do

  • your software can direct your energy across an energy internet

  • and you can share it across continents.

  • This is power to the people.

  • This is lateral power.

  • (People chanting) "This is what democracy looks like!"

  • The music companies--they didn't understand file sharing music

  • When millions and millions of young people

  • began to create software to distribute and collaborate and share their music in vast networks

  • the music companies thought it was a joke

  • Then the music companies went out of business.

  • The newspapers didn't understand the blogosphere

  • and now the newspapers are creating blogs and going out of business.

  • As powerful as these changes are

  • in the social spaces of the internet

  • when the internet joins with renewable energy it's a 100 times more powerful

  • because it changes the political landscape, fundamentally.

  • Ask this question:

  • Does this institutional behavior whether it's government, business, education-

  • is this institutional behavior centralized, patriarchal, top-down?

  • Is it closed? Is it proprietary?

  • Or is this institutional behavior distributed?

  • Is it collaborative?

  • Is it open and transparent?

  • Is it lateral power?

  • This is the new politics of a new generation.

  • Lateral power brings with it a much more equitable distribution of the fruits of society.

  • Because when millions and millions of people are sharing

  • their energy, their resources, their economic wealth

  • we create a good quality of life.

  • Nobody's left behind.

  • We all become entrepreneurs, but we all collaborate in social networks.

  • This is the way a decent, humane economy should operate on this planet.

  • Then we won't have the 99 percent versus the one.

  • We'll have the 100 percent

  • living together in a just and sustainable world.

  • So my hope

  • for this young generation

  • point the way.

  • Direct us into a new future

  • One that we can be proud of because we've shared the great fruits of this planet.

  • We've protected the interests of our fellow creatures.

  • We've preserved this earth for future generations.

  • We've made a better world.

All over the world

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