In its pure form carbon can be the soft graphite in a pencil or an immensely hard diamond It is the basic building block of most of the cells in our bodies Carbon attracts & one of the most crucial relationships it forms is with oxygen producing carbon dioxide the gas vital to life on earth This is the story of a chemical element C its myriad properties & its life cycle It is the story of a balance between photosynthesis & cell respiration between building & burning life & death Dag Olav Hessen navigates us through an exploration of the existence of carbon in minerals & rocks wood & rainforests & of carbon's role in processes such as the greenhouse effect & the carbon cycles on both small & large scales He explores the burning issues of climate change how will ecosystems respond to global change? How bad could things get? Will the world's ecosystems recover? & what are our moral obligations? Neither alarmist nor moralistic Hessen takes the reader on a journey from the atom to our planet in informative compelling prose