The Most Consequential Story in Earth's History - Peter Brannen | #72

If you spend enough time learning about climate change, you come to regard the molecule carbon dioxide—abbreivated to CO2—with fear and frustration. After all, the long accumulation of CO2 is behind roughly 75% of Earth’s warming. Leaving aside the fact that we’re the species that put all that CO2 in the air, we’re also not viewing the bigger picture. That bigger picture is the subject of today's guest's modestly titled new book, The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything. Read on...

Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email).

The book amply earns the big claim of the title, helping readers like me understand that the carbon cycle is one of the most miraculous things on Earth—and also one of the most consequential.

Buy The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything here.

Don’t get the wrong idea: Story of CO2 is not a starry eyed greenwashing affair. If anything, the book is asking us to approach the subject with humility. The carbon cycle may be miraculous, and a driving part of why life emerged on Earth, but that doesn’t mean it’s unchangeable. In continuing to burn fossil fuels, we’re tampering with that system, and at an alarming rate. Insofar as we’re already witnessing some of the consequences, we also have no way of knowing the full regimen of changes that might be occurring across the Earth system. To that, Peter employs some of the same time travel he used in The Ends of the World—which we discussed in an earlier episode—taking us on a journey through deep time to understand how the story of CO2 really did become the story of everything—at least as we understand it on our one precious planet.

BIO: Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and The Guardian among other publications. He is the author of The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything and The Ends of the World. Peter was a 2023 visiting scholar at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and is an affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He was formerly a 2018 Scripps Fellow at CU-Boulder, a 2015 journalist-in-residence at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke University, and a 2011 Ocean Science Journalism Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA. His essays have been featured in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series and in The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg. Peter is particularly interested in geology, ocean science, deep time, the carbon cycle and the Boston Celtics. Peter splits time between Cambridge, MA and Damariscotta, ME and is a placental mammal.

CREDITS: This podcast is produced & edited by Adam Labrie & me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Get full access to Reality Studies at www.realitystudies.co/subscribe