FINALIST, LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

"Ambitious, absorbing... Brannen is an effusive, maximalist writer, a mind vividly alive on the page... and his arguments, like his writing, are hugely compelling." -- The New York Times Book Review

How carbon dioxide made planet Earth, shaped human history, and now holds our future in the balance

Every year, we are dangerously warping the climate by putting gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. But CO2 isn't merely the by-product of burning fossil fuels -- it is also fundamental to how our planet works. All life is ultimately made from CO2, and it has kept Earth bizarrely habitable for hundreds of millions of years. In short, it is the most important substance on Earth. But how is it that CO2 is as essential to life on Earth as it is capable of destroying it?

In The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything, award- winning science journalist Peter Brannen reveals how carbon dioxide's movement through rocks, air, water, and life has kept our planet's climate livable, its air breathable, and its oceans hospitable to complex life. Starting at the dawn of life almost 4 billion years ago, and working all the way up through today's global climate crisis and beyond, he illuminates how CO2 has been responsible for the planet's many deaths and rebirths, for shaping the evolution of life, and for the development of modern human society. And he argues that it's only by reckoning with this planetary-scale history that we can understand the cosmic stakes of our current moment on Earth -- and how dangerous our experiment with the climate really is.

Drawing on groundbreaking research and with a clear- eyed perspective, Brannen shows how a deep exploration of the carbon cycle can shed light on the way forward for humanity as we try to avert environmental catastrophe in the future. And it all begins with a richer understanding of the critical role of CO2 in our world.

• We started tracking this book on December 14, 2024.
• This book was $15.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 4 times in the past 437 days.
• The current price of this book is $1.99 last checked 6 hours ago.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on February 23, 2026.
• This book has been $1.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $17.99 last reached on January 7, 2026.
• This book has been $17.99 2 times since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• Science & MathBiological SciencesEcology
• Science & MathEarth SciencesEnvironmental Science
• Science & MathEvolution

• Publication Date: August 26, 2025
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 508 Pages
• File Size: 170 KB