Should Greens dump artificial intelligence? Author Jeremy Rifkin on latest book “Rescuing the Future – Reimagining Artificial Intelligence in a World on the Edge”. Heat waves in the sea: “Climate change is driving unprecedented European ocean temperatures, with severe impacts for marine life.” From Maynooth University Ireland, Lead Author Claire Bergin joins us.
We dive right in with new visions from Jeremy Rifkin, followed by my comments on the interview – and then hot sea news.
Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
RESCUING THE FUTURE
JEREMY RIFKIN
Should Greens dump artificial intelligence? Long-standing author and activist Jeremy Rifkin says AI might help us emerge from this crisis with a better future. Rifkin’s best-selling books moved countries like Germany and China toward climate realism. He inspired countless millions of readers. His latest book, just out, is “Rescuing the Future – Reimagining Artificial Intelligence in a World on the Edge”.
Listen to or download this 31 minute interview with Jeremy Rifkin in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
In a nutshell, here is my quick take on the foundation for this new book. For the last three centuries, the modern world has operated on a basic belief: Earth is essentially a giant warehouse. In this view, nature is just a collection of inert raw materials – coal, oil, land, water, trees – waiting for us to extract, sell, and turn a profit. The goal of civilization was simple: make everything faster, more efficient, and more profitable. Rifkin says we have reached the absolute edge of that worldview.
ONTOLOGY?
I would ban this word from any radio interview. I explain why in my post-interview comments below. Anyway, as the book’s press release explains, Jeremy finds there are two fundamental world-views.
“Substance ontology posits that existence is spatially oriented, atemporal, and made up of inert substances and things – to wit, extractive resources – while process ontology counter argues that existence is temporal in nature and made up of processes, patterns, fluxes, and flows – to wit, animated life sources – brimming with agency, interacting at every moment with other phenomena, and continually changing the reality around us.”
AI AGAIN
Some listeners complain when I use AI to create music or artwork for this show. In his new book, Rifkin writes about his three-year conversation with ChatGPT. “Rescuing the Future” includes nine essays written by ChatGPT, complete with bibliographies. Some are three pages long.
Just for fun, I asked another AI, Google’s Gemini, whether “Rescuing the Future” could be mainly a product of AI. It said “no” for two reasons. First, the dense academic wording in this book may suggest AI, but in fact that has been Rifkin’s style for decades. It is more likely a large language model learned from Jeremy Rifkin than the other way around. Second, my AI called his new work an “idiosyncratic thesis”. It said he has original ideas which an AI would be unlikely to suggest.
A DIVE INTO “AUTOMATA” AND THE SINGULARITY
According to Rifkin’s book (about pg. 17):
“Descartes went so far as to describe human emotions – memory, imagination, and passions = as functions that follow from the arrangement of ‘its own counterweights and wheels’ and characterized our fellow creatures as ‘automata’. In a letter posted to the British philosopher Henry More in 1649, Descartes wrote, ‘It seems reasonable since art copies nature, and men can make various automata which move without thought, that nature should provide its own automata much more splendid than the artificial ones. These natural automata are the animals.’”
Rifkin treats us to a history of automata from early Arabic inventors to Medieval European clock-makers. He finds the dream of automata that never die is ages old, going all the way back to the Greeks. So the “singularity” is not new, according to Rifkin.
Jeremy’s 1995 book “The End of Work” “suggested that thinking machines – computers and robots – might eventually replace large segments of the workforce.” That sounds like Elon Musk’s dream (or nightmare) too.
GLOCALIZATION
Rifkin has a history of inventing new words as needed. One used in the interview is “glocalization”. In Rifkin’s work (particularly “The Age of Resilience” and “Rescuing the Future”), “glocalization” is his term for the economic and social shift from a centralized, hyper-globalized economy to a decentralized, locally rooted, yet globally interconnected network. It is a hybrid of global and local. Rather than choosing between closed local isolationism or unchecked global corporate capitalism, according to Rifkin “glocalization” combines the strengths of both.
FOG COMPUTING
Jeremy talks about “fog computing” in the interview. Fog computing is a decentralized computing architecture that places storage, processing, and data analysis between end devices (such as IoT [Internet of Things] sensors, smart meters, or industrial machines) and the centralized cloud.
Instead of sending every piece of raw data across the internet to a distant cloud data center, fog computing processes data locally at intermediate network nodes – known as fog nodes – such as local routers, edge gateways, or local servers.
THE PEOPLE’S AI
There is a growing, multi-faceted push to counter Big Tech’s concentration of power by creating what is broadly referred to as a “People’s AI” or Public Interest AI. Rather than relying on closed-source, cloud-hosted models controlled by companies like Microsoft, Google, or OpenAI, this movement focuses on democratization, local execution, open access, and public oversight.
SEE: “Grass Roots Social Organizing” Ehud Shapiro, 2009.
THE ROOT PROBLEM
It is time for the root problem. I have in my library a book about the environment. It was published in New York in 1934. The title is: “Our Environment – How We Use and Control It”. That worldview is what Rifkin hopes to replace.
Find out more about Jeremy Rifkins books and activism at foet.org
POST-INTERVIEW COMMENTS BY ALEX
I have questions about this Rifkin interview and about this new book. Yet I still recommend it. Here is a quick list of quibbles.
Number 1. Nobody should use the word “ontology” on radio. About 1 percent of the population knows his word. Rifkin’s definition, “ontology is the meaning of life”, is shaky to wrong. Some ontologies hold that life has no meaning. Dictionary definitions don’t agree what it means.
Ontology is one of those words that disappear the closer you look at it. All words come out of a matrix of language and cultural understandings. But this word tries to rise outside that to define the shape our world-view, the meaning or pattern of all other concepts. It is doubtful we can escape our minds to classify them in some obscure way. Jeremy is consistent in the way he uses “ontology” but also consistent in using it as a catch-phrase when other language/words could do a better job of really communicating with us mortals/listeners/readers. “Ontology” is not fit for radio.
Number 2. If “Artificial Intelligence” is in the title of the book, and plays a starring role in your solution, be prepared to talk about it. I asked Rifkin about publishing 9 ChatGPT essays in the book, and his three-years of conversations with the AI, – did he use ChatGPT as a co-author or assistant? What was his relationship with this AI? All we got was a single “no” and diversion to a different theme.
Number 3. Rifkin tells us humans as far back as 300,000 years ago thought everything from trees to rocks have their own being. Humans thought they were alive. There is zero evidence for this, what I would call a popular myth. We don’t know how pre-historic humans thought, or how developed their minds were.
Number 4. Jeremy tells us a new generation is forming alternative data communities around the world. I ask him for a single example, somewhere, and he goes into another general explanation. Show me.
DON’T LAY IT ON YOUNG PEOPLE – GRETA
Number 5. In the interview, I ask Jeremy: “Gen Z, people between 14 and 29 years old, are the first to grow up in a digital world. You claim Gen Z is moving toward stewardship rather than ownership. The Lancet studied 10,000 young people across 10 countries. They found the majority are moderately worried about climate change – but Gen Z reacts with distress and paralysis, not active biophilic stewardship. Are you placing your hope in young people, expecting a ’hero generation’?”
Rifkin’s press release says of Gen Z
“This emerging generation sees itself as an endangered species and its fellow creatures as its extended family and views existence as interactive, embedded, temporal, and communal and life’s mission as stewardship rather than ownership. Gen Zs pay homage to AI collective intelligence of all life on the planet and champions process ontology. For this generation, biophilia supersedes biophobia.”
There may be some semblance of truth to this in Europe, but that is not what appears on social media or mainstream media at all. The opposite, “substance ontology” is much stronger. Where does he get this rosy view that the next generation is better and will save life?
In the interview, Jeremy finds hope that GenZ is moving away from centralized tech into bioregionalism. That is a romantic view. Sure, some GenZ folks are exploring the alternatives. But serious studies show GenZ is all over the place, but leaning toward despair and desperation. They are also heavy consumers of fast fashion and all that implies. Remember Greta Thunberg’s outrage when older people, who caused this spiral of collapse, want to pin their hopes on young people born into it.
Thunberg told the United Nations:
“Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you?”
That was Greta at the United Nations in New York in 2019 – after she crossed the North Atlantic on a racing sailboat, not a plane.
MY MAIN BEEF
Finally my main beef with Jeremy Rifkin’s new book is: I really want most of the world Jeremy is describing. But looking around I see little sign of it coming before catastrophe unfolds. The little shoots out there are too small and too slow. But then two things rescue his vision:
First, social change can go viral, can move quite fast. Tiny companies become billion-dollar monsters in months, microscopic life can evolve in hours. Revolutions happen. Maybe we are too blinded by the slide into horror to see Rifkins’ change coming.
Second, of course Rifkin’s vision is “unrealistic”. It is not real – yet. Plenty of people complain when doomers and protesters cannot articulate the better world they want. Jeremy Rifkin has a talent for painting a better human project. That is what makes his work and this book worthwhile – even if you disagree with parts of it.
That’s my take. Add your comments to my blog below. Note: because I have no staff, I can’t afford time to constantly monitor this blog. I can’t leave it wide open to any poster as it becomes bogged down with bot traffic in minutes. I value your comments, but it could take up to ten hours before it becomes visible.
PREVIOUS RIFKIN ON RADIO ECOSHOCK
Jeremy Rifkin: Revolutionary Change Posted on November 13, 2024
“We have misunderstood the planet we live on – that misunderstanding has taken us to an extinction event in the 21st century.”
Jeremy Rifkin is the big-picture man behind “The Third Industrial Revolution” in Germany and China, visionary of mega-trends like “The End of Work“. We spend an hour with Jeremy on his latest book (of 24): “Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe”.
He predicts an extinction event in the 21st century. He talks about strange environmental changes, civilization appears to be collapsing and people are frightened. We thought of a land planet, but live on a mainly water planet.
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MARINE HEAT SURROUNDS EUROPE
CLAIRE BERGIN
No doubt you heard globally the oceans have never been as hot as they are right now, at least as long as humans could measure it. Is that adding to heat waves on land, or does the sea still cool us? We have a hot case from just this summer. Five heat waves hit the UK and Europe. New science investigated hotter waters around four big European coasts. What are the connections?
This past summer five heat waves hit Europe and the UK. The heat started early, in May, and stayed late. Even in late September and early October more summer-like heat arrived in Germany, most of North Europe, and definitely in the UK. It is really strange.
Hidden below the news, the Irish Sea and down along the Atlantic coasts of France and Spain, the ocean was overheating too. The Mediterranean Sea was hotter than ever, stunning experts, fishers, and sea life. It is bad.
A team of a dozen scientists wrapped up a mountain of data to publish a new peer-reviewed study. The title is: “Climate change is driving unprecedented European ocean temperatures, with severe impacts for marine life.” Lead Author Claire Bergin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Irish Climate Analysis Research Units (ICARUS). Previous to starting in Maynooth, Claire completed her PhD in Applied Mathematics at UCD, studying the effect of different meteorological conditions on ocean waves.
Listen to or download this 19 minute interview with Claire Bergin in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
There was a huge data review published in June 2026, Forster et al. They found globally the number of days experiencing marine heatwaves has more than tripled between 1991 and 2025.
WHY IRELAND NEEDS ICARUS
Ireland needs ICARUS because global climate models lack the granular resolution required for a small, geographically unique island. Operating sitting directly in the North Atlantic storm track, Ireland faces specific localized climate hazards that generic global data fails to capture accurately.
Global Climate Models (GCMs) analyze the Earth in large grid squares (often 50–100 km wide). They treat Ireland as a generic blur of ocean and land. ICARUS uses high-resolution regional modeling to predict how climate change will manifest in specific Irish catchments, coastlines, and microclimates.
EUROPEAN MARINE HEAT WAVES 2026
This study, peer-reviewed with 11 co-authors (many known in the field), investigated marine heat waves in four main areas. They split the Mediterranean into two regions, East and West. The third area incorporated the Spanish and Portuguese coast on the Atlantic, running up into France. The fourth study area they called “Celtic” which they describe as “Comprising the Irish Sea and St. George’s Channel, Celtic Sea, English Channel, Bristol Channel, Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland…”
The following areas are not considered in this particular study: the Baltic and North Sea, and the Black Sea. These three are also warming faster than the global average. The Baltic is recognized as one of the fastest-warming coastal marine ecosystems in the world.
A FEW OF THE MAIN FINDINGS
“Extremely high SSTs and marine heatwaves have disastrous consequences for marine ecosystems, leading to mass mortality events of habitat forming species such as corals, sponges and macroalgae. The loss of such foundation species impacts the structure and function of the entire ecosystem. Mass mortality events caused by extreme heat can thus lead to mass mortality events further down the food chain for invertebrates, fish, seabirds and marine mammals.”
“The impacts are not exclusively ecological. Global research has shown that high SSTs can influence regional climate phenomena, including monsoon rainfall, and can interact with tropical cyclones, potentially making them more destructive. For Europe, high Mediterranean temperatures have, for example, been linked to the extreme rainfall events such as the Valencia floods in 2024.”
“…observations indicate that these July events would have been virtually impossible in a pre-industrial climate, while the change in intensity ranges from 1.5°C in the Celtic region and 3.4°C in the Western Mediterranean.”
“When analysing the same regions and events but for a 1.4°C warmer future (2.8°C since pre-industrial, the current warming level expected at the end of this century) we find the changes in intensity to continue at a similar rate, so that the events observed in 2026 would be another 1.3°C to 1.9°C hotter.”
ALEX FINDS
I ask Claire if land is heating the adjoining sea, or the other way around. Apparently the land of the UK and Europe is heating up faster than the nearby seas, rather than the oceans driving the warming on land. In Europe, land warms roughly twice as fast as the oceans. While the ocean can act like a break on the heat on land, it often makes nights warmer than they would have been and raise humidity.
SEE ALSO THIS NEW STUDY:
“Climate change is driving unprecedented European ocean temperatures” (August 19 2026 from World Weather Attribution)
AND
Climate change is cooking Europe’s oceans, scientists find
AND
How Europe’s intensifying marine heatwaves threaten it’s fisheries
Reuters (paywall) By Ben Welsh
Available free here.
AND FINALLY
Extreme Marine Heatwaves in the Global Oceans during the Past Decade
Boyin Huang et al October 1, 2025
“Our study shows that MHWs, defined using several different thresholds, are strengthening with time and that the combined impact of long-term rise in SST as well as shorter-term record-breaking SSTs is causing more frequent and intense extreme MHWs.”
[Hat tip Jan Umsonst who posts a lot about marine heat waves and the state of the ocean.]
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EL NINO: LIKE 2023 BUT WORSE
Everyone wants to know how the Super El Nino this year will change our weather. I’m working on a new program about this El Nino, stronger than anything ever seen. Next week you will hear world-recognized El Nina expert Dr. Michael Mcphaden of NOAA.
In the show I play a quick clip from my program on marine heat waves – during the last El Nino in 2023. I talked with Dr. James Carton, Professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland. Carton talked about El Nino and ocean heat in this clip from Radio Ecoshock.
JAMES CARTON (transcript from Radio Ecoshock)
Alex: All right, now let’s get to the causes of the 2023 hot seas. With a team of eight scientists, you co-authored the new study titled Record High Sea Surface Temperatures in 2023. Your team suggests three causes for this abnormally hot ocean surface, and I’d like to tackle them kind of in reverse order from your paper. And so the first here is everyone knows after three years of La Nina events that released cooler ocean waters, the planet switched to a hotter El Nino in the Pacific Ocean. Can that ENSO change explain hotter surface seas that you found? And what was strange about this recent switch in the back and forth cycle of La Nina and El Nino?
James: So you’re absolutely right, 2023 we had quite a strong El Nino. And as you know, during El Nino you have warm water from the western tropical Pacific shift eastward, covering what is normally a cool eastern equatorial Pacific, so that the average temperature along the surface of the Pacific increases.
And so that effect alone will increase the average temperature on the globe. Furthermore, when you put this capping layer of warm water in the eastern Pacific, that means that the ocean in the eastern Pacific can no longer absorb heat from the atmosphere. One of the roles that the ocean plays in the Earth’s climate is that since the capacity to store heat is so much greater in the ocean than it is in the atmosphere, that the ocean can act as the temperature regulator of the Earth’s climate system by absorbing heat.
And when you have El Nino, you essentially prevent that surface regulation. And so that’s why it’s observed that when you go through the climate record, whenever you have one of these El Ninos, the average temperature of planet Earth during that year and probably the next year are above normal.
Alex: James Carton, you have been tracking ocean-atmosphere relations for over four decades. Your simple ocean data assimilation project, or SODA, is still in use. Is marine warming speeding up, and are you personally worried by climate change?
James: It seems that it is speeding up, and yes, I am worried about this issue in a way that I have to admit, when I started my career, I was much less concerned about.
That was Dr. James Carton from my program “Super Marine Heat Waves & Collapse Of Plant World” posted September 25, 2024. The paper “Record High Sea Surface Temperatures in 2023” is Open Access.
Listen to or download the full 26 minute interview with James Carton in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
BEST SCIENTISTS, FREE
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I’m Alex. Join us again next week on Radio Ecoshock. We take on the historic super El Nino happening right now. Is it overblown or under-played? Possibly THE biggest expert on El Nino joins us, Dr. Michael Mcphaden.
A MARINE HEAT WAVE SONG
You can download my reggae song for marine heat waves, or just listen. Lyrics Alex Smith, AI music, Creative Commons Copyright (use it free for non-commercial purposes).