Planet Aqua
Rethinking Our Home in the Universe
1. Auflage September 2024
360 Seiten, Hardcover
Sachbuch
Kurzbeschreibung
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.
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.
Part I: The Imminent Collapse of Hydraulic Civilization
Chapter 1: First There Was the Waters
Déjà Vu and the Second Deluge
Our Aquatic Self: How Humans Emerged from the Deep
Chapter 2: The Earth be Dammed: The Dawn of Hydraulic Civilization
The Invention of Economics
Drowning in Progress
Chapter 3: Hydrology and the Gender Wars: The Struggle Between Terra Mater and Planet Aqua
Picking Sides: The War of Goddesses and Gods
Women: The Carriers of Water
Chapter 4: The Paradigmatic Transformation from Capitalism to Hydroism
The Water-Energy-Food Nexus
Leaving Capitalism Behind
Part II: The Canary in the Mine: How the Mediterranean Ecosystem Became Day Zero on a Warming Climate and a Bellwether of the Second Coming of Life
Chapter 5: The Near Death and Rebirth of the Mediterranean
Day Zero: When Nations Run Dry
Renewables to the Rescue and a Second Life for the Mediterranean Ecosystem
Water, Water, Everywhere, But Not Any Drop to Drink...Until Now
Chapter 6: Location, Location, Location: The Mediterranean and the Eurasian Pangaea
The Bridge to Europe and Asia
Partin III: We Live on Planet Aqua and That Changes Everything
Chapter 7: The Resilient Infrastructure Revolution: A New Economic Paradigm
The Making of a Social Organism
Power to the People
From Geopolitics to Biosphere Politics
Chapter 8: Freeing the Waters
Opening the Floodgates
Harvesting the Hydrosphere
Chapter 9: The Great Migration and the Rise of Ephemeral Society
The Renaissance of the Ephemeral Arts and the Rest of Time and Space
How Plato Took Our Species Down the Wrong Path
Chapter 10: Rethinking Attachment to Place: Where We've Come From and Where We're Heading
Temporary Cities
Ephemeral Waters and Ephemeral Cities
Bringing High-Tech Agriculture Indoors
Chapter 11: The Eclipse of Sovereign Nation States and the Gestation of Bioregional Governance
Mass Migration and the Issuing of Climate Passports
Rethinking Security: Military Defense Gives Way to Climate Resilience
Part IV: Sublime Waters and a New Ontology of Life on Earth
Chapter 12: Two Ways to Listen to the Waters
Vanquishing the Waters or Riding the Waves
Reorienting Ourselves in Time and Space in a Liquid Milieu
Chapter 13: Swallowed by the Metaverse or Buoyed by the Aquaverse
An Ecological Vision or Dystopian Nightmare: Two Paths to the Future
Planet Aqua: Rebranding Our Home
Notes
Index
