With his first book "Losing Earth", the American journalist Nathaniel Rich made a name for himself outside of the United States.

He meticulously reconstructs how knowledge of the dangers of man-made climate change was already available in the 1970s - and how it was ignored by politics and business or even deliberately kept secret.

His new book promises to depict "how man is changing nature forever".

Such a focus is important, as the entire environmental debate suffers from narrowing human intervention in what science calls the “Earth System” and others “nature” very – too much – to the climate issue.

symbol of a new earth

Viewed in isolation, of course, the climate crisis harbors enough risks – and also opportunities for a more sustainable economy – to demand our full attention.

But that's not enough, because ultimately the use of fossil fuels is only a small part of human interactions with the earth.

In addition, it is wrong to only think of chimneys and exhaust pipes when it comes to greenhouse gases.

Emissions have a lot to do with how we treat natural habitats, such as carbon dioxide escaping from burning forests and drying bogs.

So perhaps we need to dig deeper and work on our relationship with everything nonhuman on Earth before an economy emerges that doesn't parasitize natural resources and weaken or kill the host.

In his introduction, Rich emphasizes this fundamental question.

Using the example of Glass Beach in California, a former oceanfront landfill for waste glass, he shows how the lines are blurring between human civilization and what we used to consider separate from us as nature.

The waves have shattered the scrap glass and rounded the shards, so the beach is now made up of millions of colorful shards that have become a tourist attraction.

There is even a debate about carting in new waste glass.

Actually a harmless thing.

But Rich sees more in it, a symbol of a new earth on which "there is scarcely a stone, leaf, or cubic yard of air that has not been drawn by our clumsy hand."

From mining settlement to billionaire eco-enclave

Humans permeate every corner of the earth in one way or another.

Earlier images of nature were a "carte blanche for their domination, destruction and exploitation - and the pride in it".

Rich sees no alternative, neither in a transfiguring romantic image of nature nor in the attempt to protect smaller and smaller areas of “untouched nature”.

Rather, he advocates understanding nature as a reflection of humans: "It is impossible to protect everything we call 'natural' from the ravages of climate change, from pollution and from psychopathic greed for profit if we do not understand that nature, whose loss we fear is our own."