Column: Carbon and Life
By David Suzuki
At its early November annual general meeting in Red Deer, Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party passed a resolution to “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity” and “recognize that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.” The party also voted to get rid of critical net-zero emissions targets, among other measures.
Are they ignorant about climate science, physics and carbon cycles? Are they trolling? Or are they so deep in the fossil fuel industry’s pockets that they’ll do anything to support it? The Alberta government appears to be taking cues from the U.S. MAGA movement, so any or all of that is possible.
Regardless of their origin, these attacks on everyone and everything from transgender people to important and effective climate measures have dangerous, real-life consequences.
It’s true that carbon dioxide is “a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.” We’re carbon-based beings, and the carbon cycle — which circulates carbon through living things, the ocean, minerals and the atmosphere — is a big part of what keeps Earth habitable. And plants do require carbon dioxide.
But, as the NASA Earth Observatory states, “Any change in the cycle that shifts carbon out of one reservoir puts more carbon in the other reservoirs. Changes that put carbon gases into the atmosphere result in warmer temperatures on Earth.”
Most carbon is stored in rocks, ocean, atmosphere, plants, soil and fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are solar energy that has been super-concentrated over millions of years. In converting sunlight to energy through photosynthesis, plants, algae and bacteria absorb and store CO2. Plants and the animals that eat them release it when they die and decompose. Plants and some animals buried millions of years ago get compressed over time, creating super-concentrated stores of carbon as coal, gas and oil.
Burning fossil fuels releases the concentrated carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 — far more than under normal cyclical processes and more than can be reabsorbed through natural processes. It remains for hundreds or thousands of years. Excess atmospheric CO2 — along with other human-generated greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons — allow solar radiation to enter Earth’s atmosphere but prevent increasing amounts from reflecting back into space. This creates a heat-trapping blanket that’s been affecting air, water and land at accelerating rates.
Most of our species’ relatively short time on Earth has been during a slowly changing geological era (by human time scales), in which solar energy absorption and reflection have provided the relatively steady conditions we need to survive and thrive — overall, not too hot or cold, somewhat predictable weather patterns and natural systems capable of renewing and regenerating.
That’s quickly changing. As we burn fossil fuels and pump massive volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and destroy plants and waters that store carbon, we’re disrupting the carbon cycle and causing the planet to heat at an alarming rate, creating more extreme weather, shifting ocean and air currents, throwing water cycles out of whack, causing droughts, floods and wildfires and making equatorial regions increasingly inhospitable, leading to greater conflict and human migration.
And while plants need CO2 for photosynthesis, more isn’t necessarily better. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes some plants to initially grow faster and bigger but studies show accelerated growth dilutes nutrients such as phosphorus, iron, zinc and protein. This affects the entire food web.
Research also shows the overall benefits to plants diminish over time and as CO2 levels rise. Global heating’s impacts — droughts, floods, wildfires, storms and excess heat — also negatively affect plant growth and reproduction. As for agriculture, rising CO2 often helps weeds more than crops.
It’s all basic science, much of it understood for hundreds of years, with knowledge growing steadily. That’s why the anti-climate positions of some state, provincial and federal parties and governments in Canada and the U.S., especially Alberta and Saskatchewan, are so bewildering.
The justifications are blatantly facile and anti-science and serve only to bolster the fossil fuel industry, which itself is finding it difficult to continue its lies and disinformation around evidence even its own scientists provided as far back as the 1950s!
Decisions must be based on knowledge and science — especially when it comes to our survival! We all deserve better from our political leadership.
David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.
Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.
