The next industrial revolution

In the depths of an economic crisis that seems to have no end, I am pondering what the shape of our next economic boom will look like. Many people have predicted that the alternative energy revolution will provide new jobs and cause developed economies to grow once again. Even though credit is tight now for alternative energy projects--most require large investments (and therefore loans) at the beginning--I agree with these experts. At some point in the next two decades, the developed world will direct the truly staggering amounts of money we spend on foreign oil and natural gas back at its own economies to build alternative energy systems. As carbon legislation and gas taxes do their work, trillions of otherwise wasted dollars will rush back into our economies, and the boom will be on.

Some people think the next industrial revolution will be energy, or nanotechnology, or some broader digital rollout. For the developed world, it may be. But I predict that the real industrial revolution, the one that people will remember, will be in the developing world. As alternative energy and digital technology becomes more and more distributed, they will spur economic growth for the other 5/6ths of humanity. Solar panels and cell-phone sized computers will tie every village in the world to the grid. The next green revolution will bring Cargill to Africa and Thailand; it is already in South America. In the next few decades, the developing world will be the new market for alternative energy, for computers, for infrastructure, for agriculture, for communications, and for cars, clothes, and everything else developed countries have now.

If all of this comes to pass, the world's demand for products will far exceed its natural resources to produce those products. Cars made out of steel will be things of the past. Let's hope that forests made out of wood won't be things of the past either. It is wrong to suggest that the rest of the world doesn't deserve to live like the developed world now: health care, education, and material comfort are human rights. Our challenge is to figure out how to create material wealth in a sustainable way: plastics that biodegrade, computers that are 100% recyclable, crops that don't poison the soil, and policies that favor keeping forests and coral reefs around. It is a generational challenge, and I think we could do it. I wonder who will have the leadership to try.