The earth has nearly died five times. Brannen's The Ends of the World is a journey through those near-deaths — the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous extinctions — told through field trips to the rocks that recorded them and conversations with the geologists, palaeontologists, and climate scientists who are reading those records. It is the most illuminating book about the present climate crisis that never mentions it by name.
Reading Rocks
The book’s method is to travel — to limestone quarries in Nevada, to road cuts in Alberta, to the beaches of Scotland — and to look at the physical evidence for each extinction event. Brannen is an exceptional guide through stratigraphy: he makes the reading of rock layers feel like forensic detection, each band of sediment a clue in a case that took millions of years to unfold.
The great mass extinctions were not uniform. Some were rapid — the asteroid impact 66 million years ago that ended the Cretaceous. Others were agonisingly slow — the Permian extinction 252 million years ago, during which volcanic eruptions over what is now Siberia released enough carbon dioxide to warm the oceans by 10°C over tens of thousands of years, acidifying the seas and collapsing ecosystems from the bottom up. About 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species died.
The Uncomfortable Mirror
The Permian extinction is the book’s centrepiece, and its parallels with current carbon emissions are not left implicit. The rate of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere today — from fossil fuel combustion — is faster than what triggered the Permian extinction, not slower. The difference is one of scale, not direction.
Brannen does not editorialize heavily. He doesn’t need to. He lets the geologists speak, lets the rock record speak, and trusts the reader to draw the connection. The effect is more disturbing than a polemic would be, because it arrives with the authority of deep time rather than contemporary politics.
The history of life on Earth is a history of catastrophe survived, catastrophe failed, and the slow rebuilding afterward. We are currently conducting an uncontrolled experiment to see which category we fall into.
— Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World
6 Key Ideas From This Book
Across all five mass extinctions, the common thread is either a sudden removal of CO₂ (leading to glaciation and sea-level drop, as in the Ordovician) or a rapid addition (leading to warming, ocean acidification, and ecosystem collapse). The carbon cycle is Earth's thermostat, and we are currently overriding it.
Marine ecosystems show the earliest and most severe signs of stress during mass extinction events. Ocean acidification — caused by CO₂ dissolving into seawater — destroys the calcium carbonate structures that underlie most marine food chains. The current rate of ocean acidification has no precedent in the fossil record except during extinction events.
After the Permian extinction, it took roughly 10 million years for biodiversity to recover to pre-extinction levels. After the Cretaceous asteroid impact, about 5 million years. "Recovery" operates on timescales that are meaningless from a human civilizational perspective — the Earth recovers, but nothing humans built or depended on would survive the interval.
Several extinction events coincide with massive volcanic basalt eruptions — the Siberian Traps for the Permian, the Deccan Traps for the Cretaceous. These "Large Igneous Province" eruptions released CO₂ over thousands to tens of thousands of years. Human fossil fuel burning is releasing comparable quantities in centuries.
Brannen addresses, more gently than some authors, the evidence that we are in the early stages of a sixth mass extinction — with current species loss rates 100-1000 times the background extinction rate. Unlike previous extinctions, this one has a known cause and a known agent.
The most striking effect of reading this book is a changed relationship to temporal scale. Human civilisation is a geological instant. The conditions that made it possible — stable climate, moderate CO₂, intact marine food chains — are rare and fragile in geological terms, not the default state of the planet.
Any Weaknesses?
Some readers will find the lack of explicit contemporary policy argument frustrating. Brannen presents the deep-time evidence and largely leaves the reader to connect it to the present. This is aesthetically appropriate but may feel insufficiently urgent to readers who want the book to shout.
The book is also focused primarily on marine extinction events, which means the terrestrial story of each extinction — the changes to forests, the loss of large vertebrates — receives less attention than it deserves.
Anyone who wants to understand the present climate crisis in the longest possible context — not as a human political problem but as a chapter in the 4-billion-year story of life on Earth.
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert for the present-day version of this story, and Drawdown by Paul Hawken for a solutions-oriented counterpart.
Climate sceptics who respond to physical evidence rather than political argument. The rock record has no agenda; it simply records what happened. This book presents that record with impeccable journalistic care.
The Permian extinction chapter will genuinely disturb you. The parallels to current conditions are precise and the geological evidence is unambiguous. This is not speculation; it is stratigraphy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Ends of the World worth reading?
One of the most important science books of the past decade, rendered without alarm and with total authority. Brannen writes about deep time with the clarity of a born teacher and the instincts of a master journalist. By the end, you will understand the present differently — not more hopefully, necessarily, but more clearly.
Who should read The Ends of the World?
Anyone who wants to understand the present climate crisis in the longest possible context — not as a human political problem but as a chapter in the 4-billion-year story of life on Earth.
What is The Ends of the World about in one sentence?
The earth has nearly died five times.
The Verdict
One of the most important science books of the past decade, rendered without alarm and with total authority. Brannen writes about deep time with the clarity of a born teacher and the instincts of a master journalist. By the end, you will understand the present differently — not more hopefully, necessarily, but more clearly.
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