Ferris Jabr’s Becoming Earth is nothing if not ambitious. Jabr is an eloquent science writer, and here he braids many well-known environmental issues, shedding light on how our Earth was created and how humans are a critical part of it. “ We and other living creatures are more than inhabitants of Earth,” he writes, “we are Earth, an outgrowth of its physical structure and an engine of its global cycles. Earth and its creatures are so closely intertwined that we can think of them as one.”

Each of three sections in the book describes one of Earth’s subsystems: the lithosphere (rock), hydrosphere (water), and atmosphere (air). Under each section are three chapters. The first covers the foundational microbes and plankton that live in that sphere, the second explores a research project that is trying to restore or maintain that sphere, and the third addresses one example of how humans have negatively affected that sphere.

Jabr sets the scene in the prologue, describing the mid-1970s research of James Lovelock, an independent scientist, who first came up with the Gaia hypothesis. His theory was that all the animate and inanimate elements of Earth are “parts and partners of a vast being who in her entirety has the power to maintain our planet as a fit and comfortable habitat for life.” Lovelock envisioned Earth as a living, breathing entity that included not just flora and fauna (the biosphere), but the lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere as well. Humans are integral to this entity.

Lovelock’s theory was widely criticized by the scientific establishment when it first came out; some of this criticism stemmed from his use of the name Gaia, a term with origins in Greek mythology. Had Lovelock used a more scientific term, he might have had a few more adherents. These days, however, scientists are starting to think that Lovelock was onto something. Jabr quotes Robert Hazen from the Carnegie Institution: “The realization that Earth’s mineral evolution depends so directly on biological evolution is somewhat shocking,” says Hazen, “It represents a fundamental shift from the viewpoints of a few decades ago.”

To explore the deep connections tying Earth systems together, Jabr visits the depths of the earth and the heights of the atmosphere, and also learns about the ocean floor. For example, for the lithosphere section, he travels over a mile underground to see microscopic organisms that feed on iron-rich water and excrete “twisted metal spires.” For the atmosphere section, he climbs a 1,066-ft research tower in the Amazon where microbes drift in the air above the forest canopy, creating nuclei around which water can condense, producing clouds and rain. For the hydrosphere section, he learns that microbes also populate the ocean floor. Their biggest contribution is to recycle 90 percent of methane that rises through ocean sediments before it reaches the surface, making them an important control on greenhouse gases and Earth’s climate. These microbes are fundamentally different from those on the earth’s surface, and, like lithospheric microbes, they don’t need light or oxygen to thrive. The ocean also contains plankton and, as scientist Susanne Menden-Deuer tells Jabr, “[Plankton] are key players in how elements move through Earth… [T]hey are literally the engine that make biogeochemical processes work.”

Jabr drives home the point that these spheres — rock, air, and water — are interdependent. For example, the atmosphere is intricately linked to the hydrosphere; it was cyanobacteria that created enough oxygen in the atmosphere for Earth to become inhabitable. If plankton like cyanobacteria vanished, “the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would double, reaching levels the planet has not experienced since the early Eocene.” (The Eocene ended nearly 34 million years ago.)

In each section, Jabr visits sites where organisms in each sphere thrive. For the lithosphere, for example, he visits the Russian Pleistocene Park. Scientists there are trying to recreate the Mammoth steppe of the Pleistocene, a grass covered plain of permafrost kept groomed (and frozen) by mammoth grazing. To do so, they have introduced non-native grazing mammals to the region. The park is well-known in environmental circles and has received everything from critical acclaim to incredulity. The goal is to keep permafrost from melting and releasing methane from microbes living underground, and to grow grass with deep roots to hold the permafrost together. So far it seems to be working in areas where grazing animals are active, though some scientists think that introducing non-native species into the region is a recipe for disaster, while others aren’t convinced that this long-gone ecosystem can be recreated.

For the hydrosphere, Jabr visits a kelp forest, while for the atmosphere he looks at wildfire, something that we’re all aware of given the proliferation of books about wildfire and the growing impacts of wildfire on communities.

Finally, Jabr tackles a major issue in each of the spheres. For the lithosphere, he explores the loss of quality, rich soil, and its importance for agriculture in general. The hydrosphere issue he addresses is plastic pollution. For the atmosphere, he takes on climate change. While these issues will be familiar to most readers, the way he pulls them all together offers a new take.

Given human’s role in Earth’s ecosystem, Jabr explains, “human activity has not simply raised global temperature or ‘harmed the environment’ — it has severely imbalanced the largest living creature known to us, pushing it into a state of crisis.” He puts our place on earth into perspective, however, writing that “we are but one of innumerable organisms crawling along the skin of a living rock, wrapped in a film of air, whirling through the vacuum of space at unfathomable speed.” But even such a miniscule speck in the universe as ourselves can have outsized impacts on Earth.

One of the key points Jabr makes throughout is the decline of the theory that Earth’s ecosystems aim towards balance. In reality, there is no homeostatic point at which the Earth’s systems will be at equilibrium. If there’s any constant in Earth’s systems, it’s change. For example, while Earth maintains radiative balance, this equilibrium is offset by carbon dioxide emissions. Jabr notes that change is always occurring, referring to the words of Rachel Carson, who saw the balance of nature as shorthand for “‘a complex, precise, and highly integrated system of relationships between living things’ that is ‘fluid, shifting, in a constant state of adjustment.’”

The book is well-structured and easy to read, with highly poetic writing throughout, and includes many interactions with scientists and their research that keeps it interesting. The revolutionary act of the book is to arrange topics we already know about into a convincing argument that the Earth really is Gaia. As Jabr writes, “Life is Earth. Our living Earth is the miracle. Life emerged from, is made of, and returns to Earth. We still carry the ocean in our blood and grow skeletons of rock.”