The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything, by Peter Brannen: Review & Discussion
Basic Summary and Review
The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything is an existentially terrifying book on multiple levels. Reading this book is so far the first and only time a nonfiction book has noticeably elevated my heart rate out of consternation whilst reading it. Initially this may sound like a rebuke, but that couldn’t be further from the case. You should read this book precisely because it is unsettling. Why exactly?
The Story of CO2 is a beginning primer of earth history, and the carbon cycle that helps ensure the planet can sustain life for as long as it has. “Life,” however, doesn’t necessarily mean human life. When one actually takes the time to study deep Earth history, one discovers that the only known habitable planet in the universe has been a hostile wasteland for billions of years. If a person hopped in a time machine to any random year in Earth’s long life, they would most likely find an environment that would kill them in seconds or minutes.
The carbon cycle is both a geological and biological process, and it took a long, long time for the Earth to reach a point where it can support the large, complex, oxygen breathing life that we are familiar with. The salient point for humanity is that because so much of the carbon cycle is due to geologic processes, and those processes take millions of years or more, the system is vulnerable to sudden shocks. Add or remove too much carbon dioxide too quickly, the Earth can, and has been thrown into climactic chaos. As Brannen points out in the book, when CO2 has been much lower in the atmosphere, on two occasions the Earth has been completely encased in ice, down to the equator. On the other extreme when much more carbon dioxide has been in the atmosphere, then there have been jungles north of the arctic circle. If that sounds outlandish and impossible then I’d recommend reading the book to get a more detailed explanation of how that’s possible.
For such drastic climate shifts the changes in the amount CO2 in the atmosphere must be enormous. The truth is more frightening, and demonstrates just how narrow the margins for habitability are. The difference in CO2 between an ice planet and arctic jungle are only fractions of a percent of the total atmosphere.
So what does that mean for humanity? Since the industrial revolution we’ve pumped gigatons worth of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that was previously sequestered underground in fossil fuels. The only equivalent in Earth history for so much CO2 being released in such a short time is super-volcanic eruptions that have led to mass extinction events. In addition, if I understood Brannen correctly, the Earth doesn’t respond to these shocks in a slow, gradual manner. Rather when certain thresholds of disruption are met they lead to cascading failures in the carbon cycle and the biosphere. It could take tens of millions of years before the Earth returns to a relatively stable condition after these cascading failures. All of which is bad news for a stupid, short-lived species of primates that has a habit of leaping before looking.
One of the aspects I appreciated most about The Story of CO2 is that it is a realistic book. It doesn’t pull punches, and it correctly assesses the scale of the challenge for global civilization to decarbonize. The rapidity with which humanity will need to change its infrastructure, its culture, and its relation to the planet and the environment is daunting. Brannen also points out that a decarbonized society will not be a utopia. A more environmentally conscious humanity will still be far from angels. I will discuss this topic in more detail in a forthcoming piece, but empires have been extracting the strategic resources they need at horrific cost to the environment and to human lives for thousands of years. It doesn’t matter if those resources are copper and tin to make bronze or tungsten, lithium, and cobalt to make solar panels and batteries. The resources may change, but the behavior doesn’t.
The Story of CO2 is the kind of book I aspire to write. The subject matter is equally fascinating and unsettling, and the skill of writing is such that it made me see the world in a way that has forever changed my outlook. This book was thought provoking enough to inspire me to start writing again after almost a year long break when I lost the motivation and the passion to write.
Discussion
Briefly, I wanted to point out that The Story of CO2 is just (“just”) about the importance of carbon dioxide to life on earth, and how the use of fossil fuels upsets a fragile balance. Burning fossil fuels is far from the only way humanity is affecting the environment, however. Creating artificial continents of plastic waste in the oceans, polluting every body of water above and below ground with toxic chemicals, pumping way more than just CO2 into the atmosphere, and a whole lot more. All of these issues are related of course, with each one affecting and magnifying the consequences of the other. That is precisely my point though. Any one of these issues in isolation is an existential challenge that would take significant resources and political will to address. Imagine how difficult it will be to try and tackle all of these problems at the same time. Half measures and window dressing will not be enough, tackling pollution and the climate crisis requires a reordering of global civilization, and a change in people’s attitudes towards consumerism and humanity’s place in the environment. The challenges appear to be insurmountable.
Whether or not that statement is true is known only to the future, and the future is loath to give up their secrets. But because the challenges at least appear insurmountable people tend to hide behind the comfort of different coping strategies. As is so often the case with human beings, these behaviors might soothe an individual, but they are detrimental to society as a whole. There are obviously many coping mechanisms people deploy, but in this context I will discuss two of them.
The first is an old favorite, denial. The thought of industrial globalization potentially causing a mass extinction event is frightening. And as I mentioned, fixing the problem is difficult. But denial is both relaxing and easy. Denial requires some work, like building a mental seawall to block the crashing waves of reality, but people have been pulling off that trick forever. Ironically industrialized society provides the technology to allow denial to become diffuse and global. Conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation is everywhere in the 21st century, and there is enough variety that anyone of any taste can find their own combination and flavors to deny whatever they want. Whole online communities and niche subcultures exist that deny basic facts like the climate crisis or that the earth is a sphere. Many conservative politicians became both believers and propagators of climate crisis denial.
The obvious problem with denial is that it is irrational and immature. Denying a problem exists might feel good in the short term, but in the long run will only make things worse. That’s just as true for an individual as it is for a global civilization. Humanity’s challenges are daunting enough without a noticeable minority pretending those challenges are fake. Denial has always been and will always be a destructive behavior.
The second coping strategy I wanted to mention is hopelessness. The reader might be wondering how hopelessness can possibly provide comfort, since the definition of the word implies the opposite. To begin with, as someone with lifelong depression, there is comfort in the familiar, no matter how miserable the familiar may be. A person inured to the feeling of despair might hesitate to leave its embrace. More importantly, I believe hopelessness in the context of climate change has a lot to offer. A lack of ambiguity is one of those offerings, a chance to be lazy is another.
If the human race on Earth is doomed and nothing can prevent that, then that means no one has to do any work to change themselves or society at large. Let’s imagine a hypothetical middle class American in the early 21st century as an example. To the extent this person has considered their impact on the climate at all, they’ve already decided that they personally can’t change the whole world so why bother trying. They continue to drive their gigantic truck or SUV unnecessarily rather than engaging with micromobility options or public transit (if any public transport exists where they live). They live in a large house with a small nuclear family with all the trappings of the mid-20th century American dream, a three car garage, a boat, an RV, lawn-care equipment, underground sprinklers for their useless lawn, and a below ground pool. Their life revolves around material spending, buying ever more things to then throw away in the wasteful delirium that is capitalism. This lifestyle has a huge environmental cost, and most of it isn’t necessary for a small family to live in health and safety. Will this person try to change their own environmentally damaging lifestyle? Will they become an advocate for change in their local community and in society more broadly? No, their belief that the fight to decarbonize is a lost cause means they don’t have to do anything. They don’t have to behave or think differently.
This mixture of resignation and laziness is just as destructive as denial. If everyone gave up before they began, no progress would ever be made. Can one person with no wealth or political influence change a global civilization built on destroying the environment for the sake of endless economic growth? No, but to quote one of my favorite songs: “It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”
Before concluding I want to acknowledge a rebuttal readers might have. Why is the lion’s share of responsibility on ordinary people to change their habits and to change society to stave off environmental collapse? People of wealth and influence created the unequal global system, they are the beneficiaries of that system, and they are the most to blame for the insane rise in the use of fossil fuels and every other form of environmental pollution. Isn’t it unfair for me to castigate the average person for their laziness and despondency but not the elite? It is unfair. It’s also unfair that the burden of addressing the climate crisis will fall on the powerless, while the powerful continue to make the problem worse. None of this is fair, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. Maybe in a better universe justice and fairness exist, but not in ours. The soul crushing job of building a better world will always fall to those brave and tireless enough to work against existing power structures. Furthermore, the excuse of “Climate change isn’t my problem because it’s someone else’s fault” is childish. Whether we like it or not, rising CO2 levels and the environmental aftereffects are a threat to all of humanity, maybe even to life on Earth. This is not a struggle anyone can sit out because they don’t feel responsible for the conditions that brought us here.
Conclusion
I have digressed enough from The Story of CO2 for now. Although I hope this demonstrates how fascinating and thought provoking this book is.
There are a lot of things people take for granted. The time they have to live, the quality time they spend with friends and loved ones, and all the other things that should matter to us but that get lost in a chaotic world. There’s something else that we all take for granted, something The Story of CO2 reminds us of. When we breathe in, we take for granted that there will be oxygen to breathe. For billions of years the Earth could not sustain human life. The oxygen that the reader is breathing as they read this sentence is a gift bestowed to you by hundreds of millions of years of photosynthetic life (although not exactly in the way you may be expecting). Life, and the geology of the Earth spent epochs paving the way for complex organisms like homo sapiens to exist. But the Earth is a mirror image of its most successful creations (or maybe we’re a mirror image of the Earth), it is equally destructive and creative. Every time this planet has allowed a biosphere to flourish, it has eventually rent it asunder (with an outside asteroid providing a rare exception).
The natural forces of the Earth are always on display, yet some people still behave with shocking disregard and disrespect for the influence our planet has over humanity. The Earth possesses dominion over us. We are only the masters of our own delusions. This is an observation that engenders feelings of fear in me, but also a sort of satisfaction (for lack of a better word).
As I write these words, different factions of authoritarians are in power or gaining power across the globe. In one form or another they want to transform the world into more of a dystopian nightmare than it already is. It remains to be seen whether these different authoritarians will be ultimately victorious, or how long they will remain in power. I am terrified of the human suffering that has already happened and will continue to happen so that people with no conscience can satisfy their ambitions. At the same time, however, reading The Story of CO2 has allowed me to look at the people trying to take over the world with sneering contempt. If we zoom out way beyond ourselves, we see that the Earth is one dinky little planet, in a dinky little solar system, in an unremarkable galaxy, in an incomprehensibly vast ocean of galaxies. Yet this dinky little planet still possesses the strength to wipe humanity off of its surface with the swipe of a proverbial hand and without much more effort wipe away any trace we ever existed. Despite this obvious fact, there are people whose vision is so narrow, and so small, that they believe they are powerful, that they are the rulers of reality. Their arrogance is a sign of their stupidity. Which makes them dangerous to live with, make no mistake. But humility is one of the only signs of real intelligence. So while I may fear those with political authority for the suffering they can cause, I cannot respect anyone who looks at the power of the Earth, and the vastness of the universe and concludes that they personally are gods in mortal form.
Along with humility, if human beings want to stop making the same mistakes of the past, we need to learn to look before leaping. We need to ask ourselves what the impact will be on the environment before we introduce some new disruptive technology. We need to wrestle with all the mistakes that have been made before us, and all the mistakes that are being made now. Lastly, we need to start thinking in eons, not in decades. Our impact on our planet will long outlive us. If we want there to be future generations of people, we can’t discount the world we will be leaving for them to live in.
Bookshop link for the book:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-story-of-co2-is-the-story-of-everything-how-carbon-dioxide-made-our-world-peter-brannen/5b2ccd7e5018160c?ean=9780063036987&next=t