The Carbon Age. Recommended Book.

The Carbon Age, by Eric Roston, paperback, 320 pagesWhile Stolzenburg examines nature on a sweeping scale, former Time journalist Eric Roston drills down to the atomic heart of the planet in The Carbon Age. I have avoided anything to do with organic chemistry for years, but Roston's book convinced me that the fastest way to understand "everything larger than an atom and smaller than a planet," is through the element carbon. It occupies a central role in the current debate about climate, but it's also found in the food we eat, the pills we pop — even high-end tennis rackets and bicycles. 

Roston writes that our use of carbon to create goods has made us "more powerful than plate tectonics" when it comes to the potential for destruction. While Hollywood filmmakers expect Armageddon to come from the skies, Roston says we should all look inward: "We are the meteor." 

Reading words printed on dead trees doesn't automatically translate into saving the planet. But by encouraging us to reevaluate the world around us, these three books offer a vision of a different path forward, one that might steer us safely out of the meteor's path.