Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe

by Jeremy Rifkin

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509563739
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.42(d)

About the Author

Jeremy Rifkin is the bestselling author of numerous works which have been translated into over 35 languages. They include The Third Industrial Revolution, The Age of Resilience, The Green New Deal and The Empathic Civilization.

Table of Contents

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