Thank you @peterbrannen.bsky.social for taking us, the readers, seriously and explaining to non-natural scientists complex scientific stuff in depth, which is surprisingly not so common in scientific dissemination books.

It's also amazing to realise that a metabolic perspective not only helps us better understand the sources of our ecological problems today, but also the emergence of life in the first place in a universe seeking to increase entropy.

In The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything, we learn that CO2 is both the source of the main element of life (carbon) and mediates the relationship between virtually the only source of energy for the biosphere (the Sun) and the Earth, regulating the climate.

Interestingly, we also see that, as with human history, the evolution of life is not linear but rather dialectic, contradictory, discontinuous. Life innovations can enter into contradiction with existing life forms, provoking crises, but might set the ground for further opportunities for life.

It also points out how, alarmingly, our times share important elements of past extinction events (rapid CO2 emissions, ocean acidification, eutrophication, etc.).

The Ends of the World examines the causes of past extinction events since the Cambrian period, showing how destabilisation of the carbon cycle has reliably led to mass extinctions.

Anyone interested in the science of the ecological crisis, the history of life on our planet, and the interaction of industrial capitalism's metabolism with the carbon cycle, I strongly recommend these two books.