\n<\/p>\n
When we talk about carbon dioxide, the narrative is almost always that of a modern-day morality play. We hear about gigatons of CO2 emitted, about rising global temperatures and about the dire, unheeded warnings of climate scientists. In these tales, CO2 often seems less like a mute, inert molecule and more like an evil supervillain\u2014a malevolent force that has been plotting for centuries to wreak havoc on our planet and ruin our lives.<\/p>\n
But according to science journalist Peter Brannen, that dismal view is far too narrow. In his first book, The Ends of the World, Brannen chronicled Earth\u2019s five major mass extinctions, charting the deep history of our planet\u2019s greatest catastrophes. For his second, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything (Ecco, 2025), he has higher ambitions, taking readers on dizzying jaunts through deep time to reframe our understanding of what may be the most vilified and misunderstood molecule on Earth.<\/p>\n
Inspired and informed by conversations with leading planetary scientists, Brannen\u2019s central argument is that CO2 is not merely an industrial pollutant but a key player in the four-billion-year-old drama of life on Earth. It is the molecule that built our planet, forming the global carbon cycle that has regulated climate, shaped geology and powered evolution for eons. He shows how the ebb and flow of atmospheric CO2 across Earth\u2019s vast history has played a role in, yes, practically everything under the sun\u2014from the primordial origins of life to the development of human civilization and our global economic system. From the ancient past to the present day, Brannen makes the case that to understand CO2 is to understand the very fabric of our world.<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n
Scientific American spoke with Brannen about what\u2019s in his new book, how he came to see a simple gas as a character in a planetary epic and what the long history of CO2 can tell us about our precarious present moment\u2014and our uncertain future.<\/p>\n
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]<\/p>\n
How did this book come to be? That\u2019s always a great way to start.<\/p>\n
My previous book, The Ends of the World, was about the five biggest mass extinctions known in Earth\u2019s history. And when paleontologists look at those events what they\u2019ve found is, yes, a space rock seems to have triggered the most recent one, the Cretaceous mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But the evidence is sparse for asteroid or comet impacts causing the others. Instead the other four\u2014the Ordovician, the Devonian, the Permian and the Triassic mass extinctions\u2014as well as the dozens of other minor mass extinctions in the fossil record, are most associated with major biogeochemical events, usually involving big spikes in atmospheric CO2. And these gigantic CO2 spikes are followed by extreme global warming and ocean acidification and all the other nasty climate change effects we\u2019re understandably worried about today.<\/p>\n
So this suggests the experiment we\u2019re now running on the planet by burning fossil fuels has a lot in common with these really grisly planetary-scale events, which were literally the worst things that have ever happened in Earth\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
But in the course of researching that book, I realized\u2014I\u2019m not the first to think this, either!\u2014that there\u2019s a much bigger story to tell about CO2 because it\u2019s not just some industrial by-product that spews out of smokestacks or spray cans such as methylmercury or chlorofluorocarbons, and so on. It\u2019s fundamentally different\u2014almost miraculously so. Life on Earth\u2014what scientists call the biosphere\u2014is carbon-based, and the source of that carbon is CO2. And when huge quantities of CO2 are suddenly injected into the atmosphere, this causes bad events, but in \u201cnormal\u201d times, as it moves through the biosphere and between the air, the rocks and the ocean\u2014the so-called global carbon cycle\u2014CO2 is essentially the key thing that makes Earth a special, habitable place.<\/p>\n
Venus is a near twin of Earth, right, almost the exact same size and bulk composition. But CO2 behaves very differently there in how it cycles around the planet; it\u2019s built up so much in Venus\u2019s atmosphere that it\u2019s caused a runaway greenhouse effect, which is why Venus is a hell world while Earth is comparatively a great place to live, right next door. Or, you know, if all the CO2 in our atmosphere suddenly vanished, temperatures would rapidly plunge and before too long, glaciers would spread down to the tropics, and the oceans would freeze, and most of the biosphere would perish in a \u201csnowball Earth\u201d episode.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s a good thing\u2014essential, in fact\u2014that there\u2019s CO2 in Earth\u2019s air, but we can absolutely have too much or too little, and the amount has fluctuated a lot over time. I wanted to reintroduce people to this thing they\u2019ve heard about in the news and explain its vital role in shaping life on Earth.<\/p>\n
I love the simplicity of the title you chose, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything. But it really swings for the fences, doesn\u2019t it? Like, \u201ceverything\u201d is a very sweeping term! And I understand what you\u2019re saying regarding planetary habitability and the fact of Earth\u2019s carbon-based life. It\u2019s harder, I think, to grasp and convey how humans come into the story, and one thing I love about your book is how adeptly you weave us into the fabric of this vastly bigger picture. Can you talk more about that?<\/p>\n
Sure, and thank you. The idea is that to really understand the story of life on Earth, as well as what\u2019s happening now with climate change, you need to understand this global carbon cycle I mentioned; life is etched in the flow of carbon all around our planet. And what I try to do in later parts of the book is describe how all of human history can be seen through this lens\u2014so societies and empires, for instance, are composed of flows of carbon being organized in different ways. And the way our society and politics have developed across the past few centuries, it turns out, is closely connected with things such as how coal got into\u2014and then how we got it back out of\u2014the Appalachian Mountains or how oxygen got into Earth\u2019s air. Seeing those connections can help explain how it was that humans came to be this geomorphological force on the planet\u2014and how bizarre and important this moment in Earth history really might be.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s so extraordinary about our current moment is how one species on one branch of this gigantic tree of life has suddenly discovered this vast, ancient underground reservoir of carbon made by old life\u2014and is lighting it all on fire. And that chemical reaction\u2014burning carbon-rich organic matter with oxygen to make CO2 and release energy\u2014is really the same thing that all aerobic life, all of Earth\u2019s animals and plants, and so on, uses to drive its metabolism on a cellular level. We\u2019re just doing this nightmarish, freakish version of it, where we\u2019re suddenly combusting all of life\u2019s leftover carbon from Earth\u2019s history under our feet. We\u2019ve sort of summoned these planetary forces into being by resurrecting the buried ghosts of all life that\u2019s ever existed by bringing them back to the surface all at once.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t really a book about chemistry, but I need to add that the only way this all works at any scale is having lots of free oxygen in the atmosphere to react with the carbon. The air we breathe today is more than 20 percent oxygen, which is interesting because, for most of Earth\u2019s history, there wasn\u2019t nearly as much oxygen in the air. And it turns out that the rise of atmospheric oxygen isn\u2019t as simple as some microbes figuring out photosynthesis a few billion years ago. You also have to constantly be burying a slow trickle of carbon\u2014in dead plants and algae, in rocks and deep-sea sediments\u2014to build the oxygen up in the air over hundreds of millions of years; otherwise the two react together, which draws oxygen back down. But if you lock that carbon up in the crust, oxygen will rise. Now, old plant stuff locked up in the crust, in those pockets where it\u2019s economically exploitable, is better known as fossil fuel, right? I bet a lot of people don\u2019t know that the reason why they can breathe is because there are fossil fuels under their feet.<\/p>\n
I like to think of this interplay between carbon in the ground and oxygen in the air as making a big planetary-scale battery, where you get two parts of Earth\u2014the really reactive, oxidizing atmosphere and the really reduced organic matter underground\u2014out of equilibrium with each other, with lots of potential energy as a result. Then this weird fire creature suddenly shows up in the middle of these two reservoirs, and over the past few centuries, it\u2019s learned how to reunite them to extract energy. So we\u2019re talking about an almost instantaneous discharge of this huge planetary battery that took all of Earth history to build up.<\/p>\n
So you\u2019re saying we\u2019re all basically fire imps dancing at the boundary between these two reservoirs, the oxygen-rich surface and the carbon-rich subsurface. And the development of human civilization really boils down to our getting better and better at discharging Earth\u2019s battery, dissipating all the potential energy across this barrier.<\/p>\n
Ha, sure, I guess that\u2019s right. Imagine how aliens might see it, describing what different organisms on Earth actually do. They\u2019d probably flag things such as nitrifying bacteria, bugs that pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere to fertilize the rest of the biosphere. But they\u2019d also notice there\u2019s this one remarkable creature that\u2019s just moving all the carbon from within the crust into the atmosphere\u2014and that\u2019s us, obviously, the fire imps.<\/p>\n
But I want to be careful: When you talk about it this way, it can seem like what we\u2019re doing is just this inevitable, natural process, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessarily true. This all sprung out of one particular part of the human population and is wrapped up in the details of human history\u2014things such as the invention of the steam engine and the rise of capitalism. What we\u2019re doing today is extremely unnatural in some ways, but I just find it eerie that it resembles this bigger picture: All life finds and dissipates free energy to maintain itself and grow. And human industrial civilization is doing this but at an almost unthinkable scale because it recently found the biggest source of free energy ever to exist on Earth.<\/p>\n
What do you think happens next? Does Earth history tell us? Are we doomed to cause\u2014and to suffer\u2014another major mass extinction, or is there a way out? Easy questions, I know.<\/p>\n
What Earth history tells us is that burning fossil fuels is not sustainable into deep geological time. There aren\u2019t enough fossil fuel reserves to sustain us indefinitely, and there\u2019s not enough margin in the carbon cycle to avoid disaster if we burn all we\u2019ve got. Our fossil fuel era is like an explosion; it can\u2019t last forever. So if we\u2019re going to endure into the geological future, we need to very quickly find another source of energy at an equivalent scale to power society.<\/p>\n
I think maybe the encouraging thing is that the public conversation, for most of the world, isn\u2019t about debating the fundamental science anymore. The science is settled. It\u2019s about different questions\u2014of understanding the complexity and interconnectivity of the global carbon cycle and our place in it or of political economy and knowing where the levers are for us to pull in this system.<\/p>\n
To understand the future and what\u2019s going to happen, not only do you have to understand things such as the response of permafrost to warming or the ocean\u2019s capacity to absorb carbon, you also have to understand humans as a component of these natural systems. This is why I think studying and communicating about climate change is the most interdisciplinary thing you can do because you can\u2019t really divide these thorny issues of how we should organize society and how we should allocate resources from these broader, planetary questions. Climate change is such a huge, boundless phenomenon that everyone has to work on their specific parts. And I like to think my part, the worthwhile service I can provide with my storytelling, is to better illustrate just how big of a problem it really is.<\/p>\n
You mentioned the science is settled, and I agree with that of course. But it seems to me there\u2019s still a lot of climate denialism masquerading as \u201cjust asking questions\u201d about scientific uncertainties, which can be pretty insidious\u2014especially when the discussions involve geological timescales.<\/p>\n
For instance, you write in your book about an unnamed smart and savvy nonscientist friend of yours who quite correctly noted to you that current levels of atmospheric CO2 are lower than they\u2019ve been for most of Earth\u2019s history and that they were dramatically higher tens of millions of years ago.<\/p>\n
This is the sort of \u201ctalking point\u201d that\u2019s easily used to minimize and dismiss present-day concerns about climate change, right? Do you worry that this noble idea of offering a \u201cbig picture\u201d view of our current moment in the context of Earth\u2019s entire history can backfire?<\/p>\n
So that exchange you mentioned was mostly about this period of time called the early Eocene, circa 50 million years ago, when CO2 was around 1,000 parts per million in the atmosphere, and Earth was about 12 degrees Celsius warmer\u2014and there was still a thriving biosphere.<\/p>\n
But to think that\u2019s relevant for our situation doesn\u2019t show an appreciation or knowledge of deep time\u2014quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
Like, yes, 50 million years ago, CO2 was much higher than it is today, and there were crocodiles and palm trees in the Arctic, and life was pretty happy. But if you ever so slightly poke at that \u201cargument,\u201d it just stops making sense because, for the past few million years, we have lived on a planet that has been in a weirdly low atmospheric CO2 regime\u2014after a long, long decline in CO2 and temperature from the \u201cgreenhouse\u201d world left over from the age of the dinosaurs. And that means most of the biosphere is now adapted to Earth being in an \u201cicehouse\u201d world that has ice ages. We\u2019re technically still in an ice age, actually, because we still have polar ice caps. And we live on a planet that is presently partitioned by national borders and has more than eight billion people dependent on staple crops in certain special places where weather and climate allow. So okay, if we reverse these trends that have prevailed for tens of millions of years and, in just a century or two, get atmospheric CO2 levels as high as they were in the Eocene and suddenly live in a world where crocodiles can be comfortable in the Arctic\u2014if you think our global civilization can withstand that shock, well, then you have more faith in humanity than I do.<\/p>\n
There are precedents in the geological record for what\u2019s happening now\u2014and looking at them is pretty terrifying. We just accept as normal that we have a whole continent, Antarctica, that\u2019s covered with kilometers-thick ice sheets. But that\u2019s actually quite unusual in Earth history. One of the other times the world had similar \u201cicehouse\u201d conditions, such as an ice-covered continent, and then suddenly shifted to a greenhouse-style climate was the Ordovician mass extinction. And that was 445 million years ago, before the planet even had trees. That\u2019s an alien world!<\/p>\n
Or look at how much and how fast we\u2019re injecting CO2 into the carbon cycle, into the atmosphere. The Permian mass extinction, the biggest one we know of\u2014paleontologists call it the Great Dying\u2014involved massive volcanic eruptions that pumped more CO2 into the air than we ever could even if we burned all available fossil fuels. And that really overwhelmed the carbon cycle and deranged Earth\u2019s climate in all sorts of awful ways, and there was a huge warming spike and almost everything died. You might think, great, we can\u2019t release as much CO2 as those eruptions did back then, even if we tried. But it\u2019s not just the volume of CO2 released; the rate matters a lot. Those eruptions happened over tens of thousands of years. And right now, as far as we know, we\u2019re emitting CO210 times faster than was emitted in the run-up to the Permian mass extinction. So what we\u2019re doing right now is pretty geologically unprecedented; we really are in uncharted territory. That doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019ll necessarily spark another mass extinction on par with the Permian, but we really are leaping into the unknown.<\/p>\n
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from your book: \u201cAnyone who tells you they know what even four degrees of warming or more in a century will actually mean\u2014or what that will look like on a planet gripped by ice ages for the past three million years\u2014is full of shit. Especially if they\u2019re an economist.\u201d<\/p>\n
I do wonder whether you\u2019re personally more optimistic or pessimistic here\u2014and how you think we might ever get to a world where we don\u2019t burn any more fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
Believe it or not, I\u2019m less pessimistic now than I was when I started writing the book in 2020; a lot has changed in the past five years. I\u2019ve recently started to better appreciate the amazing thing that\u2019s happening now with solar power. It\u2019s really getting astonishingly cheap, and China and many developing countries are prioritizing solar and things such as electric cars over fossil fuels just because it\u2019s better technology. Solar doesn\u2019t have as many awful geopolitical implications as fossil fuels or nuclear energy. There are still problems, such as supply chains for rare-earth minerals, for example. But, hey, the fact is: there\u2019s a nuclear reactor in the sky called the sun that\u2019s just beaming out free energy for us to use.<\/p>\n
So you can imagine solar blowing away the fossil fuel world in the same way that the fossil fuel world blew away the world of horse-drawn carriages and plows\u2014because it was a lot easier to buy cheap gas and fill your tractor\u2014really, to dig seas of oil out of the ground and light them on fire\u2014than it was for everyone to maintain stables of horses, right? That may be what happens next: solar gets cheaper and easier and just outcompetes fossil fuels in most domains.<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t like this ethos that\u2019s all too common, which is that you\u2019re never supposed to give people doom and gloom about the climate. I think having the shit scared out of you isn\u2019t always a bad thing\u2014because, yeah, you can look at graphs showing the extraordinary progress in solar, and you might think we\u2019re just on rails, and we\u2019re inevitably moving toward this new, better world. But that\u2019s probably wrong\u2014it\u2019s going to take concerted political intervention to stop burning fossil fuels, which is what we\u2019re going to have to do.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad you brought up how much has changed in the past five years in terms of lower-carbon energy and why there may be reasons for optimism. But, to be a bit of a downer, what about things such as the rise of AI and the associated ramp-up in energy usage for data centers and computation?<\/p>\n
Or, because you mentioned politics, how can you be optimistic, given the political situation in this country? It seems the ascendant view now at the highest levels of our government is that climate change isn\u2019t real\u2014and if it is real, it\u2019s not a problem\u2014and if it\u2019s a problem, it\u2019s not something we can solve, so we should just continue with business as usual. I mean, yikes!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s definitely not my area of expertise, but all these AI companies are burning through billions of dollars, and they\u2019re not turning a profit, and it doesn\u2019t seem like these tools increase productivity that much in most domains. Although they\u2019re profoundly useful in some areas, such as biotech, where it seems like you can use them to do practically a year\u2019s worth of research in an afternoon. And they all seem to wave away the fact that you basically need to build nuclear reactors to power these things, which is never going to be cheap to do. The point is that I imagine this will turn out a bit like the tech bubble of the 2000s: you\u2019ll have some genuinely productive, game-changing applications, but most of the projects will go under because you can\u2019t just keep losing billions of dollars per quarter forever while also facing ever increasing energy demands. It seems ripe for a massive adjustment.<\/p>\n
The U.S. can barely manage its current electrical grid, much less completely rebuild it and add twice as much power. Like so many other things we do, at some point, the AI boom is going to run into constraints that collide with politics, economics or physics. So I\u2019m skeptical there. Then again, it\u2019d be great if we gained some energy breakthrough out of necessity because that\u2019s usually when we figure stuff out. But I don\u2019t think something such as fusion power is going to happen anytime soon, even with AI as a stimulus.<\/p>\n
And as for politics, in the context of my book, I talk about these successive hegemonic powers over the past 500 years\u2014which isn\u2019t an idea I came up with. But yeah, you have the Dutch empire, and then the British empire and then the U.S. empire, each stepping up as the other gets senescent. And in that framework, looking at our political situation, it\u2019s hard to avoid the conclusion that despite its many amazing advantages, the U.S. is somehow past its prime and has chosen to cede its global leadership. And the rest of the world is now figuring out how to make do without us. Maybe it\u2019s just the death throes of a certain part of our society, having a spasm and tearing everything down while it still can. And maybe once the fever breaks, once we hit rock bottom, there\u2019ll be nowhere left to go but up. But I\u2019m not really optimistic about that, to be perfectly honest.<\/p>\n
Talking about empires\u2014nation-state superpowers\u2014iteratively shaping the whole world reminds me: As a journalist covering \u201cspace,\u201d I should note some people would argue many of the problems we\u2019ve been discussing boil down to being confined to one planet. The idea is that by somehow making life multiplanetary and extending our economic sphere out into the wider solar system, we could reduce our negative impacts on Earth while also continuing the positive exponential growth trends we\u2019ve seen in recent centuries.<\/p>\n
I wonder if you think that there\u2019s any validity to that thinking or that it\u2019s all a naive, starry-eyed pipe dream.<\/p>\n
I understand the vision and the logic behind it, and I think we need space exploration because it\u2019s important to understand our place in the universe. But yeah, we\u2019d have to do some shocking things in space to continue the exponential curve of the past couple centuries that you mentioned, such as transforming the entire solar system into a place that\u2019s of more direct benefit to our human\u2014or posthuman, I don\u2019t know\u2014society and industry.<\/p>\n
Some people seem to view the past few centuries as sort of this new trajectory that\u2019s going to go on forever. But when you appreciate how strange it is and what it required\u2014exploding this planetary battery all at once\u2014and how we never really see endless exponential growth in any complex natural system, that seems unlikely. Things usually instead display an S curve, which seems to be what we\u2019re following now. In the book, I quote this scientist who\u2019s done some back-of-the-envelope calculations showing the ridiculous things that must happen if you do take those exponential scenarios seriously. If there\u2019s a conservative relationship between energy and economic growth, then within 400 years, you\u2019re either boiling off the oceans with waste heat\u2014which is never going to happen\u2014or you\u2019re covering the entire planet with solar panels, which isn\u2019t going to happen, either. And if you extend that trend another 1,000 years or so into the future, you\u2019d be using more energy than the sun emits in all directions\u2014and that\u2019s obviously never going to happen, either. So at some point the energy-growth relationship is going to change.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t really know what the world looks like when that change happens; I don\u2019t think anyone does. But it does suggest that, one way or another, in a few centuries, human society is going to be organized very differently\u2014because right now, if growth falters even for a few years, this has major societal consequences: depressions and recessions and civil unrest and resource wars, and so on. I talk in the book about how, a few centuries ago, this thing called the Little Ice Age helped to knock out the agricultural foundations of a sort of feudal system in Europe and might have spurred things such as the Thirty Years\u2019 War and lots of other horrific stuff. And that paved the way for capitalism and the modern nation-state, and all this stuff that still structures our world today. The point is: not that long ago society looked very different, and looking ahead about the same amount of time, you can foresee it will probably have to look very different again.<\/p>\n
Back to space: More broadly, growing up, I was a total space nerd. I used to daydream about alien squid under the ice of Europa or about living in a settlement on Mars. But the more I\u2019ve learned as I\u2019ve gone on this journey into geoscience, the more I\u2019ve come to appreciate what an absolute miracle Earth is. For better or worse, I\u2019ve become increasingly uninterested in what\u2019s \u201cout there\u201d because what we have \u201cright here\u201d is so strange and beautiful, and the history of Earth is so contingent and bizarre. Why would we ever want to go to Mars, you know?! We have Earth right here!<\/p>\n
In planetary time, it\u2019s like we woke up as human beings just yesterday, and everything in this world is made almost perfect for us somehow. And a lot of that ties back to, yes, this global carbon cycle that\u2019s imbalanced just so\u2014so that there\u2019s a tiny bit of CO2 in the air to keep us barely warm enough but not so little that we freeze and not so much that it fries everything. And enough carbon is locked away in rock that we have oxygen to breathe. And the fact that we\u2019re now trashing this incredible place and destabilizing this amazing system so quickly is sort of humiliating, as a society, that we\u2019ve been such bad stewards of the planet.<\/p>\n
We talked earlier about deep time and the way our inability to properly comprehend and integrate it into our lives blinds us to what we\u2019re really doing to the planet. And this makes me wonder: How do you think people should feel, thinking about deep time and our place in it? More pointedly, having immersed yourself in all this for two books now, how do you feel? How has this journey changed you?<\/p>\n
There can be fear in feelings of awe, in facing the sublime. And I like dwelling in that disconcerting space where you\u2019re aware of and in contact with things and forces and scales that are so much bigger than you. It\u2019s a nice reminder that you\u2019re not really the main character, the star of the show.<\/p>\n
I live in Massachusetts, where some of this geology is harder to see, but when I go out West, and I\u2019m looking at some rock face that captures tens of millions of years of history, where the environment switches from the bottom of the ocean to a lagoon to a riverbed to a desert back to the bottom of the ocean, it\u2019s humbling in the best way. It really chips away at your ego. And it can be consoling, even; given how out of control things feel today and how crazy you can make yourself refreshing your social media feed and keeping up with news, there\u2019s something very peaceful in contemplating time at these gigantic scales. For me, knowing there\u2019ve been so many chaotic and scary chapters in Earth history, it\u2019s consoling to know that in a million years, everything\u2019s going to be fine.<\/p>\n
But even so, deep time doesn\u2019t really have any obvious, direct relevance to your daily life. None of us get to live on geological timescales, and we can only care about the things that are in front of us. Your personal relationships and the people you love\u2014those really are the most important things. I\u2019ve struggled with this, I\u2019ll admit. When I was writing the first book, my mom died, and I was grappling with losing her while I was also gaining this new, more cosmic perspective about Earth and our place in it. I never fully reconciled how one\u2019s personal experience should inform this deeper, bigger view.<\/p>\n
So I just come back to the recognizing the beauty of this world we all share. There\u2019s beauty in being part of this long pageant of life. I think of my mom, and I think of how there\u2019ve been countless mothers and their children that loved each other in countless ways, great and small, throughout Earth\u2019s history. I think of how, today, you can see dinosaur trackways where\u2014let\u2019s say 93,871,252 years ago, during April\u2014a dino mother and her child danced together for a moment on a sand flat. That\u2019s really beautiful\u2014all the more so when you think of all those moments that didn\u2019t even make it into the fossil record. It\u2019s a privilege to bear witness to that and to be a small part of this far greater story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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