eli5: If plants and trees thrive on Carbon dioxide, and humans are producing more carbon dioxide, does that mean vegetation is benefiting from greenhouse gases? If not, how come?

Question

eli5: If plants and trees thrive on Carbon dioxide, and humans are producing more carbon dioxide, does that mean vegetation is benefiting from greenhouse gases? If not, how come?

In: 102

Answer 1

It’s a double edged sword. Yes plants are benefitting from it to a degree both in increased supply and more areas are temperate enough to sustain more variety of plant life. One of the major problems is the plants who benefit the most are ocean algae and these having too large a bloom can be toxic to ocean life. We also pollute the ocean waybmore than we should considering 70% or so of the total oxygen is produced by ocean plant life.

So while technically greenhouse could be beneficial to plants it wouldn’t necessarily be good for the environment