Book review: Planet Aqua, by Jeremy Rifkin

For someone who has made a career out of big and bold ideas, this must have been an irresistible one: pitching a new name for the planet. That is indeed the proposal here. Humanity has misjudged the nature of our planetary home. We had always thought of it as terra firma until we saw it from space for the first time. Seeing it whole and from a distance, it’s clearly a water planet – uniquely in the solar system. Plenty of planets have solid ground. It’s water that makes it special, and so we...