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PoliticaleEconomic Governance of Renewable Chapter j 4 69

Hence the argument is that China will buy the oil from Canada. Basically
Canada (and the United States) should not even extract oil from the ground,
which permanently destroys thousands of acres of land, making them impos-
sible to repair or restore. There are far more and better resources from renewable
energy like sun, wind, geothermal, run of the river and ocean, or wave power.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The GIR emerged at the end of the 20th century due in large part to the end of
the Cold War that dominated the globe since the end of World War II (WWII).
The 2IR had dominated the 20th century because it was primarily based on
fossil fuels and technologies that used primarily mechanical and combustion
technologies. On the other hand, the GIR is one of renewable energy power
and fuel systems and smart “green” sustainable communities that use more
wireless, virtual communications and advanced storage devices like fuel cells
(Clark and Cooke, 2011). The GIR is a major philosophical paradigm change
in both thinking and implementing environmentally sound technologies, which
requires a new and different approach to economics (Clark, 2011).
The United States lived in denial during the 1970s and then again since the
early 1990s, which became apparent for both Democrat and Republican
presidential administrations in their lack of proactive polices globally through
the Kyoto Accords and most recently the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change Conference in Kopenhaven (December 2009) and Cancun
(2010). On the other hand, in the early 1990s, economic changes in Europe and
Asia were made due to the end of the Cold War to meet the new global
economy. The Asian and EU conversions from military and defense programs
to peacetime business activities were much smoother than that of the United
States. Environmental economist Jeremy Rifkin recognized this change and
developed the concept of a “Third Industrial Revolution” in his book, The
European Dream (2004). According to Rifkin the GIR took place a decade
earlier in some EU countries. He did not recognize that Japan and South Korea
had been in a GIR even decades before that (Clark and Li, 2004).
At the same time, Clark et al. (2006) published an article on “Green
Hydrogen Economy” that made the distinction between “clean” and “green”
technologies when related to hydrogen and other energy sources. The former
was often used to describe fossil fuels in an environment-friendly manner,
such as “natural gas” and “clean coal.” Green, on the other hand, means
specifically renewable sources such as the sun, wind, water, wave, and ocean
power. In short, the article drew a dividing line between what technologies
were a part of the 2IR (that is clean technologies such as clean coal and natural
gas) and the GIR (solar, wind, ocean and wave power as well as geothermal).
The GIR focused on climate change and changing the technologies and fuels
that caused it, or could at least mitigate and change the negative pollution and
emission problems that impacted the earth.