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?
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They need it, but more of it isn’t automatically better. Much like us and oxygen, once they have enough to carry out their processes adding more isn’t going to help anything.
On the other hand, changing levels of CO2 can change the environment in a number of ways, and a changing environment is always tough on things adapted to the current one. Plants develop in an area based on a certain soil composition, temperature, water availability, seasonal cycles, a whole host of things impacted by the weather and the animals, fungi and other plants around them. Those can be impacted by greenhouse levels easily and result in wiping out large areas of plants. New ones more adapted to the changes may move in, or the death of the old ones may result in altered soil, lost water, more extreme temperature fluctuation, etc…. That makes it very difficult for new ones to move in, which is where you see desertification. The likelihood of that depends on the area and the rate of change, with faster changes being worse.
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