Planet Aqua

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. Also available as an audiobook.

Detailed Contents         vii Acknowledgments         x Introduction       Part I The Imminent Collapse of Hydraulic Civilization 1             First There Was the Waters         2             The Earth Be Dammed: The Dawn of Hydraulic Civilization         3             Gender Wars: The Struggle Between Terra Firma and Planet Aqua       4             The Paradigmatic Transformation from Capitalism to Hydroism            Part II The Canary in the Mine: How the Mediterranean Eco-Region Became Day Zero on a Warming Earth and a Bellwether of the Second Coming of Life 5             The Near Death and Rebirth of the Mediterranean           6             Location, Location, Location: The Eurasian Pangaea     Part III We Live on Planet Aqua and That Changes Everything 7             Freeing the Waters          8             The Great Migration and the Rise of Ephemeral Society               9             Rethinking Attachment to Place: Where We’ve Come from and Where We’re Heading               10          Bringing High-Tech Agriculture Indoors                11          The Eclipse of Sovereign Nation States and the Gestation of Bioregional Governance          Part IV Sublime Waters and a New Ontology of Life on Earth 12          Two Ways to Listen to the Waters            13          Swallowed by the Metaverse or Buoyed by the Aquaverse          Notes    Index