Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe

What would happen if we were to awaken one day and suddenly realize that the world we live in appeared eerily alien, as if we’d been teleported to some other distant world? That frightening prospect is now. Our planetary hydrosphere, which animates all of life on Earth, is rebelling in the wake of a global warming climate, spurring biblical spring floods, devastating summer droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires and powerful autumn hurricanes and typhoons, wreaking havoc on ecosystems and society. For too long we have misjudged the very nature of our existence and to what we owe our lifeline. We have come to believe that we live on a land planet when the reality is that we live on a water planet, and now the Earth’s hydrosphere is rewilding in the throes of a changing climate, taking our species and our fellow creatures into a mass extinction event as it searches for a new equilibrium. Jeremy Rifkin calls on us to rethink our place in the universe and realize that we live on Planet Aqua. He takes us on a new journey into the future where we will need to reassess every aspect of the way we live – how we engage nature, govern society, conceptualize economic life, educate our children, and even orient ourselves in time and space. The next stage in the human journey is to rebrand our home Planet Aqua and learn how to readapt to the waters of life. Underpinned by robust research, this major new work by one of the world’s leading public intellectuals aims to redefine the very core of our existence on Planet Aqua.