In my new book – The Fate of the World: a History and Future of the Climate Crisis – I have a chapter titled Carbon Planet, and for good reason. Altogether, our world is thought to hold a staggering 1.85 billion, billion tonnes of carbon, nearly all of which is beneath our feet - two-thirds in the planet’s core and most of the rest in the surrounding mantle. A relatively small fraction of the total – a mere 100 million billion tonnes – resides in carbon-rich rocks in the Earth’s crust, such as limestones, or in hydrocarbon (oil, gas and coal) deposits. While containing sufficient carbon to roast the planet if burned, hydrocarbons only make up a little more than 4,000 billion tonnes of this total – about 400 times the amount of carbon currently pumped out annually through burning fossil fuels.
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