The Glory of Carbon

In a tense context of growing catastrophism, fueled by fear of the consequences of climate change, an indisputable but extremely complex phenomenon, and the difficulty of defining a coherent and effective ecological policy that urgently responds to the many environmental challenges facing the planet, everyone seems to agree on the denunciation of a single culprit: carbon dioxide, which is one of the stable forms of a major chemical element in the universe, carbon, but also and above all a greenhouse gas.

The false culprit

It is therefore only a question of getting rid of this gas, of sequestering it in the bowels of the earth so as not to see it any more, in short of decarbonizing the planet, a watchword which constitutes the principal determinant of the energy policies of developed countries. This approach is both simplistic and ultimately ineffective, because it is confronted with tough economic and social constraints, but also scientific and technical ones. It also has the disadvantage of reducing, in the collective unconscious, carbon to carbon dioxide alone, and the latter, whose concentration in the atmosphere continues to increase, due to the combustion of fossil fuels, to its sole greenhouse effect responsible for global warming. This simplification prevents us from seeing that carbon has been, since the beginning of humanity and in multiple forms, an essential partner of man, omnipresent in his most everyday environment, and that carbon dioxide is a central mediator of the relationship between man and nature, product of the respiration of the former and substrate of natural photosynthesis, through an essential biological cycle. Everything is carbon on the planet, life first, humans, animals, plants, biodiversity, thanks in part to carbon dioxide, and the planet, fortunately, will never be decarbonized.

It was therefore urgent to remind citizens, politicians and journalists of these realities and invite them to open their eyes to the real world in which they live in order to better address the real problems of energy and the environment, without limiting themselves to grand ideological speeches or ready-made formulas about carbon. And above all by integrating into their thinking the scientific truths that researchers have continued to establish about this chemical element, carbon, perhaps more than about any other element in the universe. This is what two philosophers of science, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Sacha Loeve, have just done. Their work is simply entitled Carbon. It is interesting to note that this title is the same as that of a chapter, the very last one, of Primo Levi’s wonderful book, The periodic systemto which the authors refer, and which speaks to us of photosynthesis and carbon dioxide with infinite tenderness, concluding that if man knew how to do as much, he would solve the problem of world hunger. Published in 1975, P. Levi’s book could not conclude, as one would do today, that if man knew how to do as much, he would solve the problem of storing solar energy and at the same time using it. CO2 as a carbon source.

Carbon and life

The great originality of the work by B. Bensaude-Vincent and S. Loeve is the angle chosen to describe the polymorphic nature of carbon, its permanent intervention in the achievements of nature and in those of man, its industrial successes and its environmental failures, its scientific prizes and its political and cultural responsibilities. It is therefore not a chemistry book, even if its reading requires a certain degree of knowledge of chemistry. It is, as the authors suggest in the preface, the biography, or rather the resume – because it is not a chronological story – of a chemical element: a new literary genre.

The journey goes from the recognition of the CO2as an exchange gas between animals and plants, the true birth of carbon, even if we have to wait until 1787 for the term “carbon” to appear in the lexicon of new names of the Academy, up to the most modern forms of carbon, which today fuel the new technological revolutions of energy, the environment and health, carbon nanotubes, graphene and fullerenes. He teaches us the immense diversity of structures that this chemical chameleon can access, diamond, graphite, soot, but above all fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal, these wastes of the living world accumulated for hundreds of millions of years, which come back to life, in a way, since if a large part of their production is intended to be burned immediately, another opens the way to organic chemistry, the one that gives birth to medicines, synthetic polymers, plastics. This is the beginning of the glory of carbon, this fossil carbon without which there is no industrial revolution, no liberation of man, with regard to space and time, this fossil carbon which upsets civilizations and history. And which, despite the advent of renewable energies, will continue for a long time, and with ever-increasing consumption, to ensure, particularly in transport and heating, the development of humanity and its daily life.

It also reminds us of this fundamental fact: if life was possible, very early in the history of the Earth, it is thanks to carbon and its unique chemical properties and more particularly thanks to what probably constituted the only source of carbon at the origins of life, namely carbon dioxide, CO2itself derived from carbon born in stars. It is these properties that explain the possibility of associations of carbon atoms between themselves and with many other atoms, associations which in turn have allowed, and still allow, the synthesis of the building blocks of life first, amino acids, sugars, nucleic bases, then nucleic acids (DNA And RNAthe molecules of genetic information), lipids (necessary for cellular compartmentalization), proteins and enzymes (the actors in the transformation of biological matter). This is what makes the only possible life organic, therefore carbon-based.

Understand to act

We must thank B. Bensaude-Vincent and S. Loeve for taking the risk of talking, or rather one could say, about carbon in a way other than the demon that we are constantly told about in political speeches and journalistic columns. Beyond the necessary rehabilitation, their work will undoubtedly allow those who read it to participate more responsibly in the development of more coherent energy and environmental policies, in which the absurd objective of radically eliminating carbon will be replaced by more intelligent carbon management, for example through energy savings or the valorization of biomass and CO2. If democratic choices are to be made, including on issues as complex as those of energy, it is obviously essential that these are based on a solid foundation of knowledge, including in disciplines as difficult as chemistry. Through the originality of its approach, through the poetry that runs through it, through the pedagogy of the authors, Carbon by B. Bensaude-Vincent and S. Loeve successfully contributes to this demanding work of informing citizens.