The Miracle Element

Fine Tuning & the Carbonization of Worlds

A lot of people worry about the carbon footprints of nations, industries, technologies, and even individual human beings and animals. They worry that our activities are pumping too much carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and methane—both powerful greenhouse gases—into the atmosphere, and too much carbon in the form of tiny particles of soot onto glaciers and snowfields. They worry that these activities are warming our planet and raising our sea levels.

However valid these concerns may be, the fact that carbon exists at all is nothing short of a miracle. And for Earth to have been blessed with neither too much nor too little carbon, either of which would preclude the existence...