As the world moves toward making more and more polluters pay to emit carbon, a financial mystery unfolds: What are the costs? Who has the responsibility to pay for them? Who do you pay? How do you pay? And what are the potential impacts?

These are the questions veteran journalist Mark Schapiro attempts to answer as he illuminates the struggle to pinpoint carbon’s true costs and allocate them fairly?all while bumping up against the vagaries of the free market, the lobbying power of corporations, the political maneuverings of countries, and the tolerance of everyday consumers buying a cup of coffee, a tank of gas, or an airplane ticket.?

Along the way, Schapiro tracks the cost of carbon through the drought-ridden farmland of California, where higher temperatures are driving up the price of the food we eat, the prices farmers pay for crop insurance, and the impact on taxpayers. Through the jungles of Brazil, where foreign polluters pay to keep trees standing?as offsets to absorb CO₂?at a fraction of the cost they are worth to the struggling communities around them, who engage in logging or other uses. Through the world's greatest manufacturing center, asking who should pay for the pollution generated there?the Chinese who operate the factories or the Westerners who consume the goods they produce? Through the skies, where recent efforts to put a price tag on the carbon left by airplanes in the no-man's land of the atmosphere created what amounted to a quiet but powerful global trade war. Through the carbon-trading capital of Europe, where economists try to establish a price for a bizarre new commodity?a ton of carbon that will not be emitted?literally selling the air in an effort to curtail emissions. And, finally, through the high-tech crime world the new carbon markets have inspired, and the emerging nations that?as they amp up manufacturing, put more cars on their streets, and up their consumption?teeter on the brink of this wild, new carbon economy.

For almost two decades, the primary topic of global climate negotiations has been to find a way to pay for the costs of carbon, slow greenhouse gas emissions, and stimulate a shift away from fossil fuels in order to shrink the earth’s carbon footprint. The key tool to date?the international carbon trade?has foundered in a sea of questions deftly explored by Schapiro, and in the turmoil of a global recession. As we approach the next climate negotiations in 2015, will nations stick to business as usual? Or will the world come to terms with the real price for carbon, and figure out a sensible way to pay for it?