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.
Excerpt from
The Carbon Age:
Since carbon is so instrumental to life, and has always been, it’s tempting
to say that every age, from
the foggy beginning, has been one of carbon. Geologists point out that the Carboniferous
Period,
which spanned from 359 million to 299 million years ago, earned its name from
the massive burial of
organic carbon, which resulted in a great accumulation of atmospheric oxygen…today’s
Carbon Age
is the Carboniferous Period in reverse—cars, power plants, and cement factories
burn long-buried
carbon back into the atmosphere, recombining carbon and oxygen into Co2. Not
surprisingly, the rise
in carbon dioxide associated with global warming is accompanied by a (nonthreatening)
decline in
the amount of atmospheric oxygen.
