"The 4th Revolution" (in German "Die 4. Revolution") is a documentary by Carl-A. Fechner, a German film-journalist focused on all issues concerning sustainability and known in his country for his courageous reporting during the first gulf war. The film can at the moment be watched in cinemas all over Germany and will be hopefully available for an international audience soon. The viewers are invited to take part in a campaign and contribute to the change the film calls for.

General theme of the film is that the change of our energy-mix from fossil fuels and nuclear power towards alternative sources such as wind, solar and water is not only possible but necessary and for this it offers an argument that goes beyond the usual "we are scared of climate-change" debate. The "Energy-Turn" is supposed to be the 4th revolution after the "agrarian revolution", the "industrial revolution" and the "digital revolution". Its revolutionary character is due to it not only being a question of what kind of energy is used, but of socio-economic power-relations and ownership-structure: the difference between huge energy monopolies of centralised energy-production and networks of local decentralized autonomous producers. The possible decentralisation thanks to the use of alternative energy brings with it a 'democratisation' of producers and real local autonomy. For the developing-world is especially important that suddenly there are possibilities for the development of rural areas apart from the main grid. Forgotten in the minds of many concerned with the dependency of the industrial economies from foreign oil and gas is that the situation for many countries of the developing world is much more dramatic as they don't have the know-how or the resources to pay for rising oil prices.

Concerning this problem, the film features the work of Ibrahim Togola, engineer and director of The Mali Folke Center (allied with the Nordic Folkecenter for Renewable Energy) that installs solar panels in rural Mali or teaches famers to cultivate the Jatropha-fruit, whose oil can be used as biofuel for diesel-engines, in turn enabling a new economic dynamic in villages "off grid" by providing light and power for machinery and appliances.

An even more daring approach to lift people out of poverty by increasing their individual autonomy is done by the Grameen bank by Nobel-peace-price winner Mohammed Yunus, famous for his micro-credit programme. Part of his "Grameen family of organizations is "Grameen Shakti" (Grameen Energy). They target Bangladeshi women in rural areas offering  them credit for solar panels on their roof, including the training necessary to maintain the controlling devices, because "the home is their domain, and solar panels are at home". This provides the women in rural areas an income of about 100 Dollar a month and thus reduces their poverty and dependency. The success is astonishing: 8000 solar panels are installed each month.

The strenght of the movie is exactly that it shows how a change in property-relations in the energy sector and a focus on even very small investments in alternative energy and education esp. of rural women can be the means of socio-economic change to the better, "the lever to move the world" to apply a saying by Archimedes here. The reduction of the dependency on foreign oil of development countries and the right approach of investment in the people (by micro-credits f.e.) can free up a huge creative potential, turn peasants into entrepreneurs and housewives into technicians and self-sufficient energy-suppliers.