Every year, we are dangerously warping the climate by putting gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. But CO2 isn’t merely the byproduct of burning fossil fuels—it is also fundamental to how our planet works. All life is ultimately made from CO2, and it has kept Earth bizarrely habitable for hundreds of millions of years. In short, it is the most important substance on Earth. But how is it that CO2 is 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 how carbon dioxide’s movement through rocks, air, water, and life has kept our planet’s climate livable, its air breathable, and its oceans hospitable to complex life. Starting at the dawn of life almost 4 billion years ago, and working all the way up through today’s global climate crisis and beyond, he illuminates how CO2 has been responsible for the planet’s many deaths and rebirths, for shaping the evolution of