Peter Brannen

One of Vox’s Most Important Books of the Decade New York Times Editors' Choice 2017 Forbes Top 10 Best Environment, Climate, and Conservation Book of 2017 As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth’s past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future. Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,” from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record—which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish—and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth’s biggest whodunits. Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.

Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions

The Ends of the World

Carbon dioxide. This seemingly simple and ubiquitous substance is fundamental to how our planet works. All life is made from CO2 and its behavior on this planet has kept it bizarrely habitable for hundreds of millions of years. In its workings lie both the splendor of our world—and the potential for life’s destruction. In short, it is the most important substance in Earth’s history. But why is CO2 as essential to life on Earth as it is capable of destroying it? In THE STORY OF CO2 IS THE STORY OF EVERYTHING, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen reveals carbon dioxide’s fundamental role in the operation and maintenance of Planet Earth. Starting at the beginning of time and working all the way up to our present reality, he illuminates how CO2 has been responsible for the planet’s many deaths and rebirths, for the evolution of life, and for the development of modern human society. Carbon dioxide’s movement through the rocks, the air, the oceans, and life has kept our planet’s climate livable, its air breathable, and its oceans hospitable to complex life for more than 500 million years. And only by understanding CO2 in the context of deep Earth history can we see how it gave rise to today’s industrial economy – and more clearly recognize what it means to be churning through hundreds of millions of years of old life in the form of fossil fuels and converting it all to carbon dioxide. With groundbreaking research and a clear-eyed perspective, Brannen shows how a deep exploration into the mechanics of the carbon cycle and the history of our planet can provide hope for averting environmental catastrophe in the future. It all starts with a richer understanding of the essential role of one substance.

Peter Brannen

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