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The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything

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The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything

By: Peter Brannen
Narrated by: Adam Verner
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the celebrated author of The Ends of the World, an epic biography of the molecule that made – and could now break – everything we know

All life is made from CO2 . It was there at earth’s birth, and throughout evolution. It has kept our planet habitable for hundreds of millions of years. It has given us all the splendours of the world we know today. And yet it also holds the potential for life's destruction.

In this gripping adventure through eras and places, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen tells the story of the world’s most important molecule. We travel from the beginning of time all the way up to our present reality, witnessing the staggering journey that CO2 has undertaken.

As we watch its movements through the rocks, the air, the oceans and living beings over four billion years, we come to see more clearly what it means for us to be churning through ancient life – in the form of fossil fuels – as we power our industrial world. We are, Brannen shows, performing an unprecedented experiment on our planet. If we are to avoid its catastrophic consequences, we must all begin to deepen our understanding of this curious substance, which has given us everything from the very first life forms on earth to the business titans reshaping our planet today.

© Peter Brannen 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Environment History History & Philosophy Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science Natural History
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Critic reviews

Urgent and astounding … Brannen weaves together the entire history of Earth, and the origins and tribulations of life over billions of years, with the predicament we find ourselves in today … Brannen is in a class of his own (Steve Brusatte)
As with everything Peter Brannen writes, this is fascinating; deep history brought vividly to life. But it's also crucial--our ability to understand and act on it will determine how the next period in earth's history unfolds (Bill McKibben)
A moving and magisterial tribute to the magic-seeming chemical interplay of air and rock, plant kingdom and ocean expanse, which scientists dryly call the ‘carbon cycle.’ Upon it, Brannen shows, absolutely all life rests—with growing, and unnerving, precarity (David Wallace-Wells)
A completely new vision of Earth and human history that will change your perspective forever (Rebecca Boyle)
What a brilliant and epic book this is! I study this stuff for a living and still learned so much—how coal nearly froze the planet, why the rocks beneath our feet allow us to breathe, and the origins of our modern industrial world (Kate Marvel)
A grand tour of billions of years of history … Brannen elegantly moves through the Earth’s epochs
An engaging story of the entire history of our planet … Brannen deftly weaves his narrative, bringing to life the story of Co2 and its importance to all life forms …. Worlds practically unimaginable to the reader because of their remoteness are vividly described … This book regularly evokes a kind of child-like wonder – and does so for a subject that is so completely woven into our everyday life that we take it for granted
This is history on a heroic scale … Brannen has a gift for translating recondite scientific facts into gorgeous psychedelic passages that verge on pure poetry
This ambitious, absorbing book begins with the origins of life and stretches through the rise of human civilization and technology … While Brannen doesn’t shy away from the fearsome shape of our future, he finds ample joy in this deep-time journey, unafraid to puncture his expertise with gob-smacked wonder … Brannen is a mind vividly alive on the page [and] his arguments, like his writing, are compelling
Brannen captures the formidable essence of a molecule that wields the power of life and death over us all (Peter Coates)
All stars
Most relevant
This book is immense! Its scope is immense; its breadth and depth are both immense. It’s about the work of an invisibly small three-atom molecule! But this molecule has seemingly been ‘in control’ through all the vast epochs when our planet was young, then middle-aged; when there was nothing here except rock, water and air; when achingly slow processes persisted over gargantuan spans of time, to make terrifying change. Then there were leaves. Then there were bacteria, animals, people, oil, Manchester.
There is an immense truth conveyed in this book, and I’m not going to spoil it by revealing it here. It’s the kind of thing one could, if one sat down and thought about hard enough for long enough, work out for oneself. It’s carbon-driven climate change, obviously, but looked at in Brannen’s way - the planet’s way - it’s awefully big. I haven’t really got adjectives that do it justice.
This book is a kind of monument. It signals where the human race has brought planet earth’s life to, at the start of the third millennium since Christ. I’m fairly sure this is the most multidisciplinary and deeply researched book I’ve ever read. Its overall trend is chronological but it’s full of branches and wrinkles. Brannen is unafraid to put in some colourful slice of history or a few pages of molecular biology. (Any one of these asides must have taken him days of research and lovingly crafting his prose - not strictly necessary for the book, but so delightful and enriching). My favourite is from Ch.5 pt1 30mins in: Dino-cephalins: <>260 million years ago; died out in the Capitanian mass extinction. Widely said to be the ugliest period of history; dimetrodons; antiosaurus; terra polis (terrible murderer), one that's part hippo, part tiger, part t-Rex.
Here are my criticisms: the sentences are too long; and Brannen makes too much use of words like ‘unthinkably’ and ‘unimaginably’.

Immense; A Monument

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Crucial reading for anyone who wants to know how we got here and where we are likely headed. Erudite and clear sighted. Utterly fascinating.

Brilliant, mind boggling, disturbing must read.

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Excellent listen. The first couple of hours drag (so do the last couple) but wow, the middle makes it all worthwhile. Hugely interesting and educational……uplifting it ain’t though

Compelling and timely

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