3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
THE THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:
THE DIGITAL INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) PLATFORM
AND THE PARADIGM SHIFT TO A SMART LUXEMBOURG
The global economy is slowing, productivity is waning in every region of the world, and
unemployment remains stubbornly high in every country. Economists are predicting 30 more
years of low productivity and slow growth. And now, after two Industrial Revolutions in the 19 th
and 20 th Centuries, we can begin to assess the impact of this economic period in human history.
Arguably, 50% of the human race today is far better off than our ancestors were before the
onset of the industrial era. It is also fair to say that 40% of the human race, that is still making
two dollars per day or less, is not appreciably better off than its ancestors were before the
Industrial Revolution. At the same time, economic inequality between the rich and the poor is
at the highest point in human history. Today, the combined wealth of the 62 richest human
beings in the world equals the accumulative wealth of half of the human beings currently living
on Earth – 3.5 billion people. 1
This dire economic reality is now compounded by the rapid acceleration of climate change
brought on by the increasing emissions of global warming gases during the First and Second
Industrial Revolutions. James Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies and the chief climatologist for the U.S. government, forecasts a 6°C rise in the Earth’s
temperature between now and the turn of the century—and with it, the end of human
civilization as we’ve come to know it. The only hope, according to Hansen, is to reduce the
current concentration of carbon in the atmosphere from 385 ppm to 350 ppm or less—
something no government is currently proposing. 2
What makes these dramatic spikes in the Earth’s temperature so terrifying is that the increase
in heat radically shifts the planet’s hydrological cycle. We are a watery planet. The Earth’s
diverse ecosystems have evolved over geological time in direct relationship to precipitation
patterns. Each rise in temperature of 1°C results in a 7% increase in the moisture-holding
capacity of the atmosphere. This causes a radical change in the way water is distributed, with
more intense precipitation but a reduction in duration and frequency. The consequences are
1 See: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/62-people-own-same-as-half-world-saysoxfam-inequality-report-davos-world-economic-forum
2 See: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_13/
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