A viral video of a girl swept away by floodwaters shocks the world — and galvanizes three university students into action. Armed with idealism and a bold plan, they journey to the tropics of Demba to help implement carbon-funded climate solutions.
What begins as a hopeful venture leads them into a thicket of wicked problems — 25 paradoxes, hiding in plain sight, that reveal just how tangled climate solutions can become, where every fix sparks new dilemmas that challenge everything they thought they knew-about climate finance, global justice, and their own roles in the fight for a livable planet.
The Carbon Paradox is an ambitious and genre-defying novel — a fictional work based on facts — that explores one of the thorniest questions of our time: how do we fund real climate action in an imperfect world?
ISBNs
978-1-63777-749-7 / 978-1-63777-750-3
Genres
Environmental Fiction
Climate Thriller
330 pages
Imprint: Red Penguin Books
Language: English, German available November 2025
Renat Heuberger
Renat Heuberger is a Swiss climate activist, serial entrepreneur, and impact investor. He has launched and led several pioneering sustainability organizations, including myclimate, South Pole, and Terra Impact Ventures.
Over the course of his career, Heuberger has helped mobilize billions of dollars into nearly 1,000 climate projects across more than 50 countries, contributing to the reduction of over one billion tons of CO₂. In recognition of his impact, he has been named a Social Entrepreneur by the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation.
He serves on numerous boards and is an elected member of Switzerland’s InnoSuisse Innovation Council. In 2024, he co-founded the Carbon Paradox initiative to foster open, constructive dialogue on the challenges and complexities of climate finance.
Raised near the Swiss Alps and having spent five years working in Asia, Heuberger developed an early passion for social justice, entrepreneurship, and nature. He enjoys hiking, mountainbiking, snowboarding, diving, or kitesurfing. He lives in Zurich with his wife and their four daughters.
Steve Zwick
Steve Zwick is an environmental consultant, analyst, and journalist who has spent his adult life trying to forge peace between the opposing forces of economy and ecology—and chronicling that effort in plain language for non-experts.
He is a senior advisor to ESG consultancy Responsible Alpha, runs the boutique advisory Bionic Planet, and produces the Bionic Planet podcast. Previously, he served as Managing Editor of Ecosystem Marketplace, shaping it into a globally respected crucible of climate policy and environmental markets, and later as Senior Manager for Special Projects at Verra, the leading carbon credit standards body.
Zwick’s journey began in the trading pits of Chicago, where he saw how information asymmetries stacked the deck for the privileged few. That realization pushed him from futures markets to grassroots environmental activism, and then to Germany, where he worked to make economic systems understandable to all—covering European business for TIME and Fortune, earning two shortlistings for Business Journalist of the Year. He also produced and hosted Deutsche Welle’s Money Talks.
He grew up on the south side of Chicago and is married to a Kenyan attorney who teaches human rights law. They own two bicycles, no car, and a pile of transit cards.
Marco Hirsbrunner
Marco Hirsbrunner is a Swiss serial entrepreneur and impact investor. He co-founded Terra Impact Ventures, where he leads operations and drives the growth of sustainability-focused startups. He also serves as co-CEO of Svarmi, an Icelandic company specializing in geospatial and nature data.
Previously, he co-founded South Pole, where he played a key role in scaling the company into a global leader in climate finance by establishing and leading offices in East and South East Asia. In parallel, his focus on operational excellence and digital solutions helped South Pole scale its work and manage one of the world’s largest and most complex carbon project portfolios.
Fluent in multiple languages, he holds an M.A. in Media and Communication Studies and Chinese Studies from the University of Zurich, where he developed a deep fascination for ancient Chinese philosophical concepts.
A lifelong enthusiast of logical puzzles and scientific paradoxes, he is especially captivated by unsolved mysteries like the Fermi Paradox—the central enigma of astrobiology, which asks why, in a universe so vast, we have yet to encounter another civilization. One sobering possibility—later dubbed the “Great Filter”—is that the same technologies capable of carrying a civilization to the stars may also hasten its destruction.
Reviews
The Carbon Paradox is a genre-bending triumph—blending fiction and deep expertise to illuminate the messy realities of climate finance… A vital, timely guide for navigating complexity with courage and hope.
Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Ferraro, Professor of Strategic Management, IESE Business School, Spain
It’s so tempting to spend the rest of the night finishing it—just like Ella, the protagonist… My first thought was: ‘I want to translate this into Vietnamese and publish it, because as many people as possible should read it.’
Dang Hanh, Co-founder and Managing Director, VNEEC, Vietnam
I would never have imagined that a story about young environmental activists navigating carbon markets – in all their technical, political and philosophical complexity – could be so gripping, informative, and hopeful. The small victories and repeated setbacks ring true, as I know from my own experience of trying to make markets and business work for people and planet.
Joshua Bishop, University of Sydney, former chief economist, IUCN, Australia
Our greatest challenge is that farmers don’t speak finance; finance doesn’t speak farmer; and neither speaks high-level COP jargon. Through the power of storytelling, this book bridges worlds — smallholder farmers and financiers, the Global North and the Global South, policy and practice — in a way we urgently need.
Chiyedza Heri, Founder & CEO, Ubuntu Alliance, Zimbabwe
If you think it is hard to make the world of carbon markets interesting and engaging, think again: Zwick, Heuberger and Hirsbrunner have done it in style… Part fable, part hero’s journey, part documentary and part thriller. Honestly, I don’t know how they came up with this chimera, but it works.
Ricardo Bayon, Partner and Co-founder, Encourage Capital and Adjunct Professor, Brown University, USA
Yin and Yang. The world works entirely based on paradoxes… Being written as a fiction is a fresh approach. A must read!
Agus Sari, CEO, Landscape Group, Indonesia
The Carbon Paradox is not only highly readable and gripping—it is truly innovative. By weaving real-world paradoxes into a compelling story, it reshapes how we think about the challenges of CO₂ emissions.
Prof. Gregor Dorfleitner, Professor of Finance, University of Regensburg, Germany
The book perfectly captures the dreams, the intentions, the tension, the hope, the conflicts, the will for action in the face of imperfection… To date, I have not seen anything better.
Giulia Gervasoni, Executive Director, Sustainability & Climate Risk, UBS, Switzerland
Renat, Steve, Marco: your Five Elements gives us the map. I’d add one more: the Rivers, the liquidity that carries Climate Units from source to sink, so the water can circulate through the whole system. When that river flows, the price of polluting is crystal clear, and the value of reducing, avoiding, and removing it is just as tangible.
Juan Carlos Gonzalez Aybar, CEO, Fronterra, Peru
The Carbon Paradox is a fresh, refreshing, and surprisingly fun take on how to move us to action through a wild ride, semi-autobiographical allegorical MUST READ TODAY adventure!
Lisa Neuberger Fernandez, Co-Founder, SharpBrains Advisors and Professor of Strategy, IE Business School, USA