100 Books Like The Story of CO2

I have spent a lifetime researching the deep history of life.

All the books I’ve chosen demonstrate a convergence of exciting ideas, and I love the way Peter Brannen’s book joins the dots in a totally fresh way, showing how life gained energy at key stages, all involving CO2. It is the starting point for every living thing on the planet; it has regulated the climate throughout 4 billion years, and through the fossil remains of ancient photosynthesis has powered our world since the Industrial Revolution.

In a world seeking answers to deep-rooted problems, this is the most powerful message for the future that we need. I have never before been so mindblown by a book.

I like the way Paul Hawken focuses on the marvellous richness of the world that carbon made, effectively reversing the title and subtitle.

The book is a celebration of the cornucopia of riches that carbon’s astonishing fertility and diverse scope allow, when left to itself. Of the microbes, Hawken writes: “If the little things run the world, the littlest things of all may hold the greatest influence.” 

On a human scale, Hawken is a champion of the wisdom of traditional culture that lives as part of nature rather than apart from it, as industrial man does. Rewilding will be an important part of the way forward for carbon, and Hawken is an eloquent advocate.   

I love the way that Everything Evolves insists that the way that technology develops really is the same process as evolution in nature.

People have often used this idea metaphorically, but Vellend shows how the concept of evolution didn’t have to start in biology. It’s just that Darwin’s idea had maximum impact for obvious reasons.

The book reinforces the ideas in Peter Brannen’s, showing that there is now a fresh way of looking at, yes, Everything. 

I have researched and written about human evolution and I was delighted to see the publication of Laura Spinney’s book on one of the most intriguing mysteries in history: why are most of the European languages, several North Indian languages and some Persian languages related?

The parallels between the evolution of life and language are especially strong, and they come together in this quest, with the spread of the languages emerging from a nomadic tribe, the Yamnaya, who lived just north of the Caspian Sea around 5000 years ago.

This more recent history – though still deeper than the old history based on only written sources – is also part of the great epic story of CO2.

As a climate activist and lover of glaciers and glaciation, I took a special interest in David Archer’s book, The Long Thaw. Archer takes us in and out of ice ages, explaining with surprisingly understandable prose just how ice ages are formed, their predictable cycles, why they’re important, and how with current climate change trends and impacts, we just may have missed the onramp to the next one. That could put us into a Hothouse Earth scenario not seen since the times of the dinosaurs. Archer masterfully brings science to the layperson. If we think that the year 2100 is a marker in the sand for climate change, think again. Archer reveals that the chilling (or heating) reality of climate change just might be forever. 

Fifty million years ago, alligators lived north of the Arctic Circle.

We humans evolved in a much cooler world. Today Earth’s climate is changing radically, to our own peril, as we spew long-buried carbon into the sky by burning fossil fuels.

In this sophisticated yet readable book, Peter Dorman lays out the political economy of climate change, explaining why to address this unprecedented threat we must redress the inequalities of wealth and power that plague modern society.

The bad news is that this will be hard work; the good news is that it is possible. Dorman’s book is a tour de force, a sobering call to action graced with rays of hope.

I worry that people don’t hear enough about solutions to the climate crisis, but, thankfully, Paul Hawken and his collaborators lay many of them out in this book.

They focus not on the flashy technologies that often grab headlines—and not just on the reduction of fossil fuels—but on the power of a healthy, living Earth to heal itself. Of course, we need to be partners in this healing, and Hawken illuminates the people, organizations, and approaches that are doing just that.

As one can tell from the title, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. But it is a masterful and nuanced synthesis of climate and earth system science that details what is likely to happen if the climate crisis continues unabated.

I loved the way it shows us in a systematic, step-by-step fashion how each additional degree of planetary heating will disrupt our world and steadily push us towards the brink. And it does so in a way that is sensitive to geographical variation and uneven vulnerabilities between the global north and south. This is an essential guide to an over-heating world and a warning of what is to come if we fail to rapidly bring down emissions.  

I love Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide, by Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, because he is very good at combining a sterling knowledge of science with activism. This is exactly what I have been doing in several books on the world climate crisis during the last 25 years. While I have trouble with some of the connections he is that he is trying to make (does global warming really have a tie to vulcanism?), I really love McGuire’s easy-to-read style. The fact that he works both with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and as an author of books, as well as work several U.K. and U.S. newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, The [London] Times, The Observer, New Scientist, Focus, and Prospect, means that his work speaks to several audiences at once. I… show more.

By now, we all know the Earth needs saving. And most of us try to do our part – recycling, composting, using less plastic, etc. But it’s hardly enough...yet still, what more can we as individuals do? That question didn’t stop the young activists in Girl Warriors. These young women have Stepped Up! Over and over again, I found myself awed at the stories that included speaking at a UN Climate Change Conference (Isabella Fallahi) and organizing a Global Cleanup Day that included 27 countries (Lilly Platt). The young women profiled are not afraid to tackle large, seemingly insurmountable problems if it means saving the Earth. I loved how in-depth the profiles went on the various actions being undertaken. If they can do it, why not me? Or you?