From solar storms to asteroid impacts, the untold story of how environmental change throughout the cosmos shaped human history.

Our solar system is a dynamic place where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our comparatively minuscule corner of the cosmos: planet Earth.

In Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean, Dagomar Degroot traces the surprising threads linking human endeavor to the rest of the solar system. He shows how variability in planetary environments shaped geopolitics, spurred scientific and cultural innovation, and encouraged new ideas about the emergence and ultimate fate of life. Martian dust storms altered the trajectory of the Cold War and inspired fantastical stories about alien civilizations. Comet impacts on Jupiter led to the first planetary defense strategy. And volcanic eruptions spewed sulfuric acid into Venus’s atmosphere, exposing the existential risks of climate change at home.

In the dawning era of space settlement, cosmic environments are becoming increasingly vulnerable to human activity. They may also hold the key to slowing the destruction of environments on Earth. Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean asks what it will take to develop an interplanetary environmentalism across a vast mosaic of entangled worlds.

Dagomar Degroot is an environmental historian whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Nature and Aeon. His first book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720, was named one of the ten best history books of 2018 by the Financial Times. He is Associate Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University.