Editor's Note: Today, we feature a guest post from TIME Magazine journalist and author, Eric Roston. Eric's latest book is THE CARBON AGE: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat. Learn more at TheCarbonAge.com or at Eric's blog CarbonNation.org. Eric's book was featured on NPR and he recently matched wits with Stephen Colbert (see clip below) regarding carbon. Read Eric's essay below to learn more about the premise of the book and the importance of carbon science.

"Carbon" is the most important word that people know the least about. I came to this conclusion toward the end of 2003, while covering climate and energy for TIME magazine. Carbon had become a media buzzword, all but devoid of meaning. Industrial waste was changing the Earth's atmosphere and heating the globe. So... carbon was bad! Lance Armstrong rode to victory in Paris every summer on a $6,500 carbon-fiber bike. So... carbon was good! Many Americans still eschew "carbs," through the Atkins diet and its variants. So... carbs are bad! Except that U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps undergoes "carbo-loading" - read: lots of healthy, high-energy food -  before his daily bid for Olympic gold. So... carbs are good! Good! Bad! Good! Bad! Good!

The truth is, of course, that carbon is the core structural element of all life and civilization, beyond good and evil. Carbon is the atomic Velcro that holds itself and the other elements of life in place. Most of DNA is carbon. Most of your computer is carbon. In 200 years or so, scientists have identified, named, and even catalogued about 37 million kinds of substances. More than 99 percent of them - all but 100,000 or so - contain carbon. If you are looking for a quick way to make sense of the world and our place in it, "carbon science" unifies seemingly far-flung parts of our experience into one singular, and simple, narrative.

Unless you are looking at a diamond, lighting a charcoal grill, or investigating the potentially miraculous properties of carbon nanotubes, carbon itself can be quite limiting. Carbon and oxygen are the Lennon and McCartney of the Periodic Table: Their ensemble work is more compelling than their solo ventures. Toss in hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and the other elements of life, and you've got yourself quite a story, the biggest story: the story of evolution and how it both shapes and is shaped by the global carbon cycle; and the story of human technology, its role within evolution, and how industry is now rewiring the global carbon cycle. Part I of The Carbon Age traces the "natural" path of carbon through life and nature; Part II follows the carbon through industry and nature. Chapters in each part complement each other for a ready-made comparison of how evolution and technology each confront similar problems.

The opportunities and challenges that we face this century are enormous - and deeply entwined with the path of carbon through life and the inanimate forces of nature. The Carbon Age is a way to take a step back, a deep breath, and to understand the larger context for industry as a geological force - and the predicted geophysical boomerang headed in our direction. The book posits that the fastest way to learn the most about ourselves and our world is through the carbon atom. A mainstream nonfiction book, it was designed to intrigue and entertain readers from high-school to retirement. The Carbon Age embeds industrialization and its climate crisis into evolutionary and geological history - by design an after-the-fact "prequel" to and foundation for An Inconvenient Truth and the other superb works of climate science.

More implicitly, The Carbon Age sets its sights on U.S. scientific illiteracy. In February 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission laid out national security threats to the United States over the next 25 years. Seven months later, the commission's first warning, a major terrorist attack, looked eerily prescient. Less frequently remembered is the second threatening trend: Decline in U.S. science and education. Tom Friedman picked up on this thread in The World Is Flat, sorting through the long-term effects of scientific decline on a national economy. The National Academy of Sciences gave the topic a rigorous treatment in its 2005 report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. These three works raise but do not answer the question: What actual science is missing from public discourse that might make a dent in scientific illiteracy? The Carbon Age is a rigorous attempt to complement these works, too, by unifying at least a dozen scientific disciplines into one singular story. And while appreciating science can't quantifiably reduce carbon dioxide emissions, knowledge and education are pivotal to change.

Scientists have convinced non-scientists that they have to think and talk about science in the same categories the professionals do. They don't. In fact, they shouldn't. The Carbon Age eliminates the dozens of "-ologies" that dominate professional science. Everywhere you look, the categories that we divide the world into - in newspaper sections, congressional committees, high school classes - are badly outdated. They obscure rather than illuminate how the world works. Once those stovepipe categories are stripped away, you are left with one big box. I called this box "carbon science." With the stovepipes removed, carbon science offers a front row view of the dynamic context that is missing from the daily churn of media and political chatter. Carbon not only makes up our world, it makes it make sense.

And if nothing else, carbon is what's for dinner.