Greenhouse Planet: How Rising CO2 Changes Plants and Life as We Know It

Biologist Ziska separates fact from fiction in this impassioned take on carbon dioxide’s “fundamental importance and existential consequences” for plantlife. He starts with “the ‘CO2 is plant food’ meme,” an idea seized upon by climate change deniers that maintains that more atmospheric carbon dioxide will be good for plants and the Earth. Not so, Ziska writes: the impacts of rising levels are “incredibly complex... and will affect—directly, fundamentally, and irrevocably—all life as we know it.” In establishing the importance of flora, the author covers how plants are used for pharmaceuticals, the history of humans’ relationship with weeds (“a corn plant may be desirable if you want to grow corn, but the following year, if you are growing soybeans... it will be considered a weed”), and how plants are used in religious practices. Ultimately, Ziska posits, rising levels of CO2 make invasive species more prone to catching fire and increase crop-hindering weed growth, among other disastrous effects. He ends with a plea for a reversal of “the political degradation of science” and takes aim at the Trump administration for the “unprecedented” degree of “censorship and political influence in denying science.” Climate activists will savor this rebuttal to bunk science. (Nov.)