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How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat
Walker & Company
June 2008
On Sale: June 24, 2008
320 pages
ISBN: 0802715575
EAN: 9780802715579
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The story of carbon—the building block of life that is,
ironically, humanity’s great threat .
It could be said that all of us are a little alien—our
bodies’ carbon atoms first shot forth from supernovas
billions of years ago and far, far away. Carbon has always
been the ubiquitous architect and chemical scaffolding of
life and civilization; indeed, all living things draw
carbon from their environments to stay alive, and the great
cycle by which carbon moves through organisms, ground,
water, and atmosphere has long been a kind of global
respiration system that helps keep Earth in balance. And
yet, when we hear the word today, it is more often than not
in a crisis context: carbon dioxide emissions have sped up
the carbon cycle; chlorofluorocarbons are destroying the
ozone layer and warming the planet; the volatile Middle
East explodes atop its stores of volatile hydrocarbons;
carbohydrates threaten obesity and diabetes.
In The Carbon Age, Eric Roston evokes this essential
element, its journey illuminating history from the Big Bang
to modern civilization. Charting the science of carbon—how
it was formed, how it came to Earth and built up—he
chronicles the often surprising ways mankind has used it
over centuries, and the growing catastrophe of the
industrial era, leading us to now attempt to wrestle the
Earth’s geochemical cycle back from the brink. Blending the
latest science with original reporting, Roston makes us
aware, as never before, of the seminal impact carbon has,
and has had, on our lives.
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