After we speak about carbon dioxide, the narrative is nearly all the time that of a modern-day morality play. We hear about gigatons of CO2 emitted, about rising international temperatures and in regards to the dire, unheeded warnings of local weather scientists. In these tales, CO2 typically appears much less like a mute, inert molecule and extra like an evil supervillain—a malevolent pressure that has been plotting for hundreds of years to wreak havoc on our planet and wreck our lives.
However in keeping with science journalist Peter Brannen, that dismal view is way too slender. In his first e-book, The Ends of the World, Brannen chronicled Earth’s 5 main mass extinctions, charting the deep historical past of our planet’s biggest catastrophes. For his second, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of The whole lot (Ecco, 2025), he has increased ambitions, taking readers on dizzying jaunts by deep time to reframe our understanding of what could be the most vilified and misunderstood molecule on Earth.
Impressed and knowledgeable by conversations with main planetary scientists, Brannen’s central argument is that CO2 isn’t merely an industrial pollutant however a key participant within the four-billion-year-old drama of life on Earth. It’s the molecule that constructed our planet, forming the international carbon cycle that has regulated local weather, formed geology and powered evolution for eons. He reveals how the ebb and move of atmospheric CO2 throughout Earth’s huge historical past has performed a task in, sure, virtually all the pieces below the solar—from the primordial origins of life to the event of human civilization and our international financial system. From the traditional previous to the current day, Brannen makes the case that to grasp CO2 is to grasp the very cloth of our world.
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Scientific American spoke with Brannen about what’s in his new e-book, how he got here to see a easy fuel as a personality in a planetary epic and what the lengthy historical past of CO2 can inform us about our precarious current second—and our unsure future.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
How did this e-book come to be? That’s all the time an effective way to start out.
My earlier e-book, The Ends of the World, was in regards to the 5 greatest mass extinctions recognized in Earth’s historical past. And when paleontologists take a look at these occasions what they’ve discovered is, sure, an area rock appears to have triggered the newest one, the Cretaceous mass extinction that worn out the dinosaurs 66 million years in the past. However the proof is sparse for asteroid or comet impacts inflicting the others. As a substitute the opposite 4—the Ordovician, the Devonian, the Permian and the Triassic mass extinctions—in addition to the handfuls of different minor mass extinctions within the fossil file, are most related to main biogeochemical occasions, often involving massive spikes in atmospheric CO2. And these gigantic CO2 spikes are adopted by excessive international warming and ocean acidification and all the opposite nasty local weather change results we’re understandably apprehensive about as we speak.
So this implies the experiment we’re now working on the planet by burning fossil fuels has lots in widespread with these actually grisly planetary-scale occasions, which had been actually the worst issues which have ever occurred in Earth’s historical past.
However in the middle of researching that e-book, I spotted—I’m not the primary to suppose this, both!—that there’s a a lot greater story to inform about CO2 as a result of it’s not just a few industrial by-product that spews out of smokestacks or spray cans reminiscent of methylmercury or chlorofluorocarbons, and so forth. It’s basically totally different—virtually miraculously so. Life on Earth—what scientists name the biosphere—is carbon-based, and the supply of that carbon is CO2. And when large portions of CO2 are all of the sudden injected into the ambiance, this causes unhealthy occasions, however in “regular” instances, because it strikes by the biosphere and between the air, the rocks and the ocean—the so-called international carbon cycle—CO2 is actually the important thing factor that makes Earth a particular, liveable place.
Venus is a close to twin of Earth, proper, virtually the very same measurement and bulk composition. However CO2 behaves very otherwise there in the way it cycles across the planet; it’s constructed up a lot in Venus’s ambiance that it’s triggered a runaway greenhouse impact, which is why Venus is a hell world whereas Earth is relatively an awesome place to dwell, proper subsequent door. Or, you recognize, if all of the CO2 in our ambiance all of the sudden vanished, temperatures would quickly plunge and earlier than too lengthy, glaciers would unfold all the way down to the tropics, and the oceans would freeze, and many of the biosphere would perish in a “snowball Earth” episode.
So it’s an excellent factor—important, in actual fact—that there’s CO2 in Earth’s air, however we are able to completely have an excessive amount of or too little, and the quantity has fluctuated lots over time. I wished to reintroduce individuals to this factor they’ve heard about within the information and clarify its very important position in shaping life on Earth.
I like the simplicity of the title you selected, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of The whole lot. But it surely actually swings for the fences, doesn’t it? Like, “all the pieces” is a really sweeping time period! And I perceive what you’re saying concerning planetary habitability and the very fact of Earth’s carbon-based life. It’s more durable, I feel, to know and convey how people come into the story, and one factor I like about your e-book is how adeptly you weave us into the material of this vastly greater image. Are you able to speak extra about that?
Positive, and thanks. The concept is that to actually perceive the story of life on Earth, in addition to what’s taking place now with local weather change, it’s essential to perceive this international carbon cycle I discussed; life is etched within the move of carbon throughout our planet. And what I attempt to do in later components of the e-book is describe how all of human historical past might be seen by this lens—so societies and empires, as an example, are composed of flows of carbon being organized in numerous methods. And the best way our society and politics have developed throughout the previous few centuries, it seems, is intently related with issues reminiscent of how coal bought into—after which how we bought it again out of—the Appalachian Mountains or how oxygen bought into Earth’s air. Seeing these connections might help clarify the way it was that people got here to be this geomorphological pressure on the planet—and the way weird and vital this second in Earth historical past actually could be.
What’s so extraordinary about our present second is how one species on one department of this gigantic tree of life has all of the sudden found this huge, historical underground reservoir of carbon made by outdated life—and is lighting all of it on fireplace. And that chemical response—burning carbon-rich natural matter with oxygen to make CO2 and launch power—is de facto the identical factor that every one cardio life, all of Earth’s animals and vegetation, and so forth, makes use of to drive its metabolism on a mobile degree. We’re simply doing this nightmarish, freakish model of it, the place we’re all of the sudden combusting all of life’s leftover carbon from Earth’s historical past below our ft. We’ve form of summoned these planetary forces into being by resurrecting the buried ghosts of all life that’s ever existed by bringing them again to the floor all of sudden.
This isn’t actually a e-book about chemistry, however I want so as to add that the one approach this all works at any scale is having numerous free oxygen within the ambiance to react with the carbon. The air we breathe as we speak is greater than 20 p.c oxygen, which is attention-grabbing as a result of, for many of Earth’s historical past, there wasn’t practically as a lot oxygen within the air. And it seems that the rise of atmospheric oxygen isn’t so simple as some microbes determining photosynthesis a couple of billion years in the past. You additionally need to always be burying a sluggish trickle of carbon—in lifeless vegetation and algae, in rocks and deep-sea sediments—to construct the oxygen up within the air over a whole lot of tens of millions of years; in any other case the 2 react collectively, which attracts oxygen again down. However in the event you lock that carbon up within the crust, oxygen will rise. Now, outdated plant stuff locked up within the crust, in these pockets the place it’s economically exploitable, is best generally known as fossil gas, proper? I wager lots of people don’t know that the rationale why they’ll breathe is as a result of there are fossil fuels below their ft.
I like to consider this interaction between carbon within the floor and oxygen within the air as making a giant planetary-scale battery, the place you get two components of Earth—the actually reactive, oxidizing ambiance and the actually lowered natural matter underground—out of equilibrium with one another, with numerous potential power in consequence. Then this bizarre fireplace creature all of the sudden reveals up in the course of these two reservoirs, and over the previous few centuries, it’s discovered how one can reunite them to extract power. So we’re speaking about an virtually instantaneous discharge of this large planetary battery that took all of Earth historical past to construct up.
So that you’re saying we’re all mainly fireplace imps dancing on the boundary between these two reservoirs, the oxygen-rich floor and the carbon-rich subsurface. And the event of human civilization actually boils all the way down to our getting higher and higher at discharging Earth’s battery, dissipating all of the potential power throughout this barrier.
Ha, certain, I assume that’s proper. Think about how aliens may see it, describing what totally different organisms on Earth truly do. They’d in all probability flag issues reminiscent of nitrifying micro organism, bugs that pull nitrogen out of the ambiance to fertilize the remainder of the biosphere. However they’d additionally discover there’s this one outstanding creature that’s simply shifting all of the carbon from inside the crust into the ambiance—and that’s us, clearly, the hearth imps.
However I need to watch out: Whenever you speak about it this fashion, it could actually appear to be what we’re doing is simply this inevitable, pure course of, and I don’t suppose that’s essentially true. This all sprung out of 1 specific a part of the human inhabitants and is wrapped up within the particulars of human historical past—issues such because the invention of the steam engine and the rise of capitalism. What we’re doing as we speak is extraordinarily unnatural in some methods, however I simply discover it eerie that it resembles this greater image: All life finds and dissipates free power to take care of itself and develop. And human industrial civilization is doing this however at an virtually unthinkable scale as a result of it just lately discovered the largest supply of free power ever to exist on Earth.
What do you suppose occurs subsequent? Does Earth historical past inform us? Are we doomed to trigger—and to endure—one other main mass extinction, or is there a approach out? Straightforward questions, I do know.
What Earth historical past tells us is that burning fossil fuels isn’t sustainable into deep geological time. There aren’t sufficient fossil gas reserves to maintain us indefinitely, and there’s not sufficient margin within the carbon cycle to keep away from catastrophe if we burn all we’ve bought. Our fossil gas period is like an explosion; it could actually’t final ceaselessly. So if we’re going to endure into the geological future, we have to in a short time discover one other supply of power at an equal scale to energy society.
I feel possibly the encouraging factor is that the general public dialog, for many of the world, isn’t about debating the elemental science anymore. The science is settled. It’s about totally different questions—of understanding the complexity and interconnectivity of the worldwide carbon cycle and our place in it or of political financial system and realizing the place the levers are for us to drag on this system.
To know the longer term and what’s going to occur, not solely do it’s important to perceive issues such because the response of permafrost to warming or the ocean’s capability to soak up carbon, you even have to grasp people as a element of those pure programs. This is the reason I feel learning and speaking about local weather change is essentially the most interdisciplinary factor you are able to do as a result of you possibly can’t actually divide these thorny problems with how we should always arrange society and the way we should always allocate sources from these broader, planetary questions. Local weather change is such an enormous, boundless phenomenon that everybody has to work on their particular components. And I wish to suppose my half, the worthwhile service I can present with my storytelling, is to raised illustrate simply how massive of an issue it truly is.
You talked about the science is settled, and I agree with that in fact. But it surely appears to me there’s nonetheless lots of local weather denialism masquerading as “simply asking questions” about scientific uncertainties, which might be fairly insidious—particularly when the discussions contain geological timescales.
For example, you write in your e-book about an unnamed good and savvy nonscientist good friend of yours who fairly appropriately famous to you that present ranges of atmospheric CO2 are decrease than they’ve been for many of Earth’s historical past and that they had been dramatically increased tens of tens of millions of years in the past.
That is the form of “speaking level” that’s simply used to attenuate and dismiss present-day considerations about local weather change, proper? Do you are concerned that this noble thought of providing a “massive image” view of our present second within the context of Earth’s whole historical past can backfire?
In order that trade you talked about was largely about this time period known as the early Eocene, circa 50 million years in the past, when CO2 was round 1,000 components per million within the ambiance, and Earth was about 12 levels Celsius hotter—and there was nonetheless a thriving biosphere.
However to suppose that’s related for our state of affairs doesn’t present an appreciation or data of deep time—fairly the alternative.
Like, sure, 50 million years in the past, CO2 was a lot increased than it’s as we speak, and there have been crocodiles and palm bushes within the Arctic, and life was fairly comfortable. However in the event you ever so barely poke at that “argument,” it simply stops making sense as a result of, for the previous few million years, now we have lived on a planet that has been in a weirdly low atmospheric CO2 regime—after an extended, lengthy decline in CO2 and temperature from the “greenhouse” world left over from the age of the dinosaurs. And meaning many of the biosphere is now tailored to Earth being in an “icehouse” world that has ice ages. We’re technically nonetheless in an ice age, truly, as a result of we nonetheless have polar ice caps. And we dwell on a planet that’s presently partitioned by nationwide borders and has greater than eight billion individuals depending on staple crops in sure particular locations the place climate and local weather permit. So okay, if we reverse these developments which have prevailed for tens of tens of millions of years and, in only a century or two, get atmospheric CO2 ranges as excessive as they had been within the Eocene and all of the sudden dwell in a world the place crocodiles might be comfy within the Arctic—in the event you suppose our international civilization can face up to that shock, nicely, then you could have extra religion in humanity than I do.
There are precedents within the geological file for what’s taking place now—and taking a look at them is fairly terrifying. We simply settle for as regular that now we have a complete continent, Antarctica, that’s coated with kilometers-thick ice sheets. However that’s truly fairly uncommon in Earth historical past. One of many different instances the world had related “icehouse” situations, reminiscent of an ice-covered continent, after which all of the sudden shifted to a greenhouse-style local weather was the Ordovician mass extinction. And that was 445 million years in the past, earlier than the planet even had bushes. That’s an alien world!
Or take a look at how a lot and how briskly we’re injecting CO2 into the carbon cycle, into the ambiance. The Permian mass extinction, the largest one we all know of—paleontologists name it the Nice Dying—concerned huge volcanic eruptions that pumped extra CO2 into the air than we ever might even when we burned all obtainable fossil fuels. And that actually overwhelmed the carbon cycle and deranged Earth’s local weather in all types of terrible methods, and there was an enormous warming spike and virtually all the pieces died. You may suppose, nice, we are able to’t launch as a lot CO2 as these eruptions did again then, even when we tried. But it surely’s not simply the quantity of CO2 launched; the fee issues lots. These eruptions occurred over tens of 1000’s of years. And proper now, so far as we all know, we’re emitting CO210 instances sooner than was emitted within the run-up to the Permian mass extinction. So what we’re doing proper now could be fairly geologically unprecedented; we actually are in uncharted territory. That doesn’t imply we’ll essentially spark one other mass extinction on par with the Permian, however we actually are leaping into the unknown.
This jogs my memory of one among my favourite quotes out of your e-book: “Anybody who tells you they know what even 4 levels of warming or extra in a century will truly imply—or what that can appear to be on a planet gripped by ice ages for the previous three million years—is filled with shit. Particularly in the event that they’re an economist.”
I do wonder if you’re personally extra optimistic or pessimistic right here—and the way you suppose we’d ever get to a world the place we don’t burn any extra fossil fuels.
Consider it or not, I’m much less pessimistic now than I used to be once I began writing the e-book in 2020; lots has modified prior to now 5 years. I’ve just lately began to raised recognize the wonderful factor that’s taking place now with solar energy. It’s actually getting astonishingly low-cost, and China and lots of creating nations are prioritizing photo voltaic and issues reminiscent of electrical vehicles over fossil fuels simply because it’s higher expertise. Photo voltaic doesn’t have as many terrible geopolitical implications as fossil fuels or nuclear power. There are nonetheless issues, reminiscent of provide chains for rare-earth minerals, for instance. However, hey, the very fact is: there’s a nuclear reactor within the sky known as the solar that’s simply beaming out free power for us to make use of.
So you possibly can think about photo voltaic blowing away the fossil gas world in the identical approach that the fossil gas world blew away the world of horse-drawn carriages and plows—as a result of it was lots simpler to purchase low-cost fuel and fill your tractor—actually, to dig seas of oil out of the bottom and lightweight them on fireplace—than it was for everybody to take care of stables of horses, proper? That could be what occurs subsequent: photo voltaic will get cheaper and simpler and simply outcompetes fossil fuels in most domains.
However I don’t like this ethos that’s all too widespread, which is that you simply’re by no means supposed to present individuals doom and gloom in regards to the local weather. I feel having the shit scared out of you isn’t all the time a nasty factor—as a result of, yeah, you possibly can take a look at graphs exhibiting the extraordinary progress in photo voltaic, and also you may suppose we’re simply on rails, and we’re inevitably shifting towards this new, higher world. However that’s in all probability mistaken—it’s going to take concerted political intervention to cease burning fossil fuels, which is what we’re going to need to do.
I’m glad you introduced up how a lot has modified prior to now 5 years by way of lower-carbon power and why there could also be causes for optimism. However, to be a little bit of a downer, what about issues such because the rise of AI and the related ramp-up in power utilization for information facilities and computation?
Or, since you talked about politics, how are you going to be optimistic, given the political state of affairs on this nation? It appears the ascendant view now on the highest ranges of our authorities is that local weather change isn’t actual—and whether it is actual, it’s not an issue—and if it’s an issue, it’s not one thing we are able to resolve, so we should always simply proceed with enterprise as normal. I imply, yikes!
It’s positively not my space of experience, however all these AI corporations are burning by billions of {dollars}, and so they’re not turning a revenue, and it doesn’t appear to be these instruments improve productiveness that a lot in most domains. Though they’re profoundly helpful in some areas, reminiscent of biotech, the place it looks as if you need to use them to do virtually a 12 months’s price of analysis in a day. And so they all appear to wave away the truth that you mainly must construct nuclear reactors to energy this stuff, which isn’t going to be low-cost to do. The purpose is that I think about it will end up a bit just like the tech bubble of the 2000s: you’ll have some genuinely productive, game-changing purposes, however many of the initiatives will go below as a result of you possibly can’t simply hold dropping billions of {dollars} per quarter ceaselessly whereas additionally going through ever rising power calls for. It appears ripe for an enormous adjustment.
The U.S. can barely handle its present electrical grid, a lot much less fully rebuild it and add twice as a lot energy. Like so many different issues we do, sooner or later, the AI increase goes to run into constraints that collide with politics, economics or physics. So I’m skeptical there. Then once more, it’d be nice if we gained some power breakthrough out of necessity as a result of that’s often once we determine stuff out. However I don’t suppose one thing reminiscent of fusion energy goes to occur anytime quickly, even with AI as a stimulus.
And as for politics, within the context of my e-book, I speak about these successive hegemonic powers over the previous 500 years—which isn’t an thought I got here up with. However yeah, you could have the Dutch empire, after which the British empire after which the U.S. empire, every stepping up as the opposite will get senescent. And in that framework, taking a look at our political state of affairs, it’s onerous to keep away from the conclusion that regardless of its many wonderful benefits, the U.S. is one way or the other previous its prime and has chosen to cede its international management. And the remainder of the world is now determining how one can make do with out us. Possibly it’s simply the dying throes of a sure a part of our society, having a spasm and tearing all the pieces down whereas it nonetheless can. And possibly as soon as the fever breaks, as soon as we hit all-time low, there’ll be nowhere left to go however up. However I’m probably not optimistic about that, to be completely sincere.
Speaking about empires—nation-state superpowers—iteratively shaping the entire world jogs my memory: As a journalist masking “area,” I ought to observe some individuals would argue lots of the issues we’ve been discussing boil all the way down to being confined to 1 planet. The concept is that by one way or the other making life multiplanetary and increasing our financial sphere out into the broader photo voltaic system, we might scale back our unfavorable impacts on Earth whereas additionally persevering with the constructive exponential development developments we’ve seen in current centuries.
I ponder in the event you suppose that there’s any validity to that considering or that it’s all a naive, starry-eyed pipe dream.
I perceive the imaginative and prescient and the logic behind it, and I feel we’d like area exploration as a result of it’s vital to grasp our place within the universe. However yeah, we’d need to do some surprising issues in area to proceed the exponential curve of the previous couple centuries that you simply talked about, reminiscent of reworking the whole photo voltaic system into a spot that’s of extra direct profit to our human—or posthuman, I don’t know—society and trade.
Some individuals appear to view the previous few centuries as form of this new trajectory that’s going to go on ceaselessly. However once you recognize how unusual it’s and what it required—exploding this planetary battery all of sudden—and the way we by no means actually see infinite exponential development in any advanced pure system, that appears unlikely. Issues often as a substitute show an S curve, which appears to be what we’re following now. Within the e-book, I quote this scientist who’s performed some back-of-the-envelope calculations exhibiting the ridiculous issues that should occur in the event you do take these exponential eventualities severely. If there’s a conservative relationship between power and financial development, then inside 400 years, you’re both boiling off the oceans with waste warmth—which isn’t going to occur—otherwise you’re masking the whole planet with photo voltaic panels, which isn’t going to occur, both. And in the event you prolong that development one other 1,000 years or so into the longer term, you’d be utilizing extra power than the solar emits in all instructions—and that’s clearly by no means going to occur, both. So sooner or later the energy-growth relationship goes to alter.
I don’t actually know what the world appears like when that change occurs; I don’t suppose anybody does. But it surely does recommend that, a technique or one other, in a couple of centuries, human society goes to be organized very otherwise—as a result of proper now, if development falters even for a couple of years, this has main societal penalties: depressions and recessions and civil unrest and useful resource wars, and so forth. I speak within the e-book about how, a couple of centuries in the past, this factor known as the Little Ice Age helped to knock out the agricultural foundations of a form of feudal system in Europe and might need spurred issues such because the Thirty Years’ Struggle and plenty of different horrific stuff. And that paved the best way for capitalism and the trendy nation-state, and all these things that also buildings our world as we speak. The purpose is: not that way back society regarded very totally different, and looking out forward about the identical period of time, you possibly can foresee it’ll in all probability need to look very totally different once more.
Again to area: Extra broadly, rising up, I used to be a complete area nerd. I used to daydream about alien squid below the ice of Europa or about residing in a settlement on Mars. However the extra I’ve discovered as I’ve gone on this journey into geoscience, the extra I’ve come to understand what an absolute miracle Earth is. For higher or worse, I’ve turn out to be more and more bored with what’s “on the market” as a result of what now we have “proper right here” is so unusual and exquisite, and the historical past of Earth is so contingent and weird. Why would we ever need to go to Mars, you recognize?! We’ve got Earth proper right here!
In planetary time, it’s like we wakened as human beings simply yesterday, and all the pieces on this world is made virtually excellent for us one way or the other. And lots of that ties again to, sure, this international carbon cycle that’s in steadiness simply so—in order that there’s a tiny little bit of CO2 within the air to maintain us barely heat sufficient however not so little that we freeze and never a lot that it fries all the pieces. And sufficient carbon is locked away in rock that now we have oxygen to breathe. And the truth that we’re now trashing this unimaginable place and destabilizing this wonderful system so rapidly is form of humiliating, as a society, that we’ve been such unhealthy stewards of the planet.
We talked earlier about deep time and the best way our lack of ability to correctly comprehend and combine it into our lives blinds us to what we’re actually doing to the planet. And this makes me marvel: How do you suppose individuals ought to really feel, fascinated about deep time and our place in it? Extra pointedly, having immersed your self in all this for 2 books now, how do you really feel? How has this journey modified you?
There might be concern in emotions of awe, in going through the chic. And I like dwelling in that disconcerting area the place you’re conscious of and involved with issues and forces and scales which can be a lot greater than you. It’s a pleasant reminder that you simply’re probably not the principle character, the star of the present.
I dwell in Massachusetts, the place a few of this geology is more durable to see, however once I exit West, and I’m taking a look at some rock face that captures tens of tens of millions of years of historical past, the place the setting switches from the underside of the ocean to a lagoon to a riverbed to a desert again to the underside of the ocean, it’s humbling in the easiest way. It actually chips away at your ego. And it may be consoling, even; given how uncontrolled issues really feel as we speak and the way loopy you can also make your self refreshing your social media feed and maintaining with information, there’s one thing very peaceable in considering time at these gigantic scales. For me, realizing there’ve been so many chaotic and scary chapters in Earth historical past, it’s consoling to know that in 1,000,000 years, all the pieces’s going to be high quality.
Besides, deep time doesn’t actually have any apparent, direct relevance to your day by day life. None of us get to dwell on geological timescales, and we are able to solely care in regards to the issues which can be in entrance of us. Your private relationships and the individuals you’re keen on—these actually are an important issues. I’ve struggled with this, I’ll admit. After I was writing the primary e-book, my mother died, and I used to be grappling with dropping her whereas I used to be additionally gaining this new, extra cosmic perspective about Earth and our place in it. I by no means totally reconciled how one’s private expertise ought to inform this deeper, greater view.
So I simply come again to the recognizing the great thing about this world all of us share. There’s magnificence in being a part of this lengthy pageant of life. I consider my mother, and I consider how there’ve been numerous moms and their youngsters that beloved one another in numerous methods, nice and small, all through Earth’s historical past. I consider how, as we speak, you possibly can see dinosaur trackways the place—let’s say 93,871,252 years in the past, throughout April—a dino mom and her baby danced collectively for a second on a sand flat. That’s actually stunning—all of the extra so once you consider all these moments that didn’t even make it into the fossil file. It’s a privilege to bear witness to that and to be a small a part of this far better story.
