Book review: Planet Aqua by Jeremy Rifkin
Jeremy Rifkin's new book challenges us to rethink our perception of the earth as being a land planet to being primarily one that's made of water.
Planet Aqua: Jeremy Rifkin's new book asserts we're waking up to the reality that we live on a water planet - and it changes everything
What would happen if we suddenly realized that the planet we live on appeared eerily alien, as if we’d been teleported to some other distant world? That frightening prospect is now. Our planetary hydrosphere, which animates life on Earth, is rebelling in the wake of a globally warming climate; it's unleashing blockbuster winter snows, biblical spring floods, devastating summer droughts, heatwaves and wildfires and deadly autumn hurricanes. These weather extremes wreak havoc on ecosystems, infrastructure, and society. While fossil fuels lit the fuse, it’s the hydrosphere that’s ringing our death knell, asserts Rifkin.
In Planet Aqua, Rifkin argues we've misjudged the very nature of our existence. We've long believed we live on a land planet when in reality we live on a water planet; and now the hydrosphere - which means all the water on a planet - is taking us into a mass extinction as it searches for a new normal. Rifkin says we need to stop thinking of water as a resource when it's our life source and we must adapt to the hydrosphere rather than thinking we can adapt it to our requirements.
Rifkin takes us into a new future where we'll need to reassess every aspect of the way we live – how we engage nature, pursue science, govern society, conceptualize economic life, educate our children, and even orient ourselves in time and space on our water planet. The next stage in the human saga is to ‘rebrand’ our home Planet Aqua and usher in a Blue Economy to accompany the Green Economy.
The big conversation taking place in Europe over the past six months is the call for a 'Blue Deal' to accompany the 'Green Deal' as the next leap forward in the European Union. The 'Blue Economy' agenda is also emerging in China and Korea as a centrepiece for rethinking life on Planet Aqua, and this thinking is going to migrate to the UK, the UK, and other nations around the world.
The European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions, critical industries, trade associations, the farming community, government, academia, and civil society are all coalescing around the urgent need to address the dramatic change in the climate brought on by a rewilding hydrosphere that's killing off our fellow creatures and endangering our own species on a scale unprecedented in history.
If it all sounds apocalyptic, well Rifkin argues the near future isn't looking good if there is not an international 'Blue Deal'. We need to research into critical themes including demolishing what he says are outmoded superdams and artificial reservoirs; the construction of new resilient water infrastructure; the introduction of omnipresent distributed water internets and water microgrids; portable desalination devices and water purification system;, sponge cities; water calendars and safe climate corridors. And this must happen alongside extending legal rights to rivers to run free, deploying green hydrogen infrastructure, stewarding lakes, rivers, and streams as shared commons, addressing the dire threat of groundwater depletion, repurposing the water-energy-food nexus, pursuing fundamental shifts in science and technology on a water planet, and developing new approaches to teaching across the board.
In short, if we want to ensure life on earth, we need a Blue Agenda every bit as much as a Green Agenda.
Planet Aqua is widely available, including on Amazon, at £20.69
Jeremy Rifkin is an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist.
