Can Planting Trees Fix Climate Change? (Plants & Biomes): Crash Course Botany #14

Whether in a desert, the savanna, or a tropical rainforest, plants have an important role in the ecological processes of Earth’s biomes. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore these different living locales, the effects of climate change on them, and how our photosynthetic friends make the world go ‘round.

Chapters:
Backpacking Across Earth 00:00
Types of Biomes 1:16
Plants' Role in Biomes 2:23
How Climate Change Affects Biomes 4:36
Is Planting Trees the Answer? 8:28
Protecting Earth's Biomes 10:22
Review & Credits 11:26

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Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?

[avilonea]

Instead of enforcing more regulations on these billion dollar oil companies we're encouraged to do these really small tasks with little significant change to the rate of climate change, we wouldn't be here in the first place if corporations would just put the planet and its people first.

[DenoWaffles]

For starters. Alexis, I'm glad your here. Happy for you ever since I saw your videos on which plants to eat and how to make tea from other plants. And now your here on cash course. You rock!!

[asrbgalasi]

Isn't she the foraging girl on tiktok? Love her vids!

[saracollum]

Did I miss the answer to the branch out question?

[vitorbranco]

Hi! I love your content! But I need to say: the chart at time 5:22 has an error on the left axis…

[webx]

The #1 problem regarding fossil fuels is that coal, oil, and gas are all carbon forms that were completely removed from the carbon cycle. Even if you sequester carbon in trees, the trees still burn down or get digested, releasing ALL of their sequestered CO2 in the process.

In fact, I believe it was coal that was created by plants that fell before any decomposers could process cellulose. So that was the only time coal could have been created naturally and sequestered that permanently.


Unless we are doing something like solidifying carbon and shooting it into space or burying it in the ground, everything we emit is permanently a part of the carbon cycle and not reversible by any natural means that currently exist. Like, nature can adapt, but not with out massive, massive amounts of death in the process. We invented our way into it. If we want to undo it in some way, we have to invent our way out.

Personally, I like the idea of somehow converting it forms of carbon to be used as materials rather than fuels. Carbon-based ICs, carbon-based construction materials, etc. The issue is that if you incentivize demand for carbon, the atmosphere isn't the cheapest source. In fact, natural gas usually is. So then you start incentivizing burning natural gas simply for the sake of burning natural gas.

[GKSTR]

I'm sure this will come up in another video, but the ocean's are an incredibly large souce of oxygen for the planet. Once we begin boiling them, we start the doomsday timer. Hopefully we can curtail our oil dependency soon.

[_derpderp]

Short answer-no. But are trees one of the best features on planet earth? Yes.

[decembersunita]

If we boil oceans no amount of planting trees will save us.

[lakrids-pibe]

Arid brazilian biome?

The answer is:

Olê, mulé rendera ♩ ♬

Olê, mulé rendá ♪ ♫

Tu me ensina a fazê renda ♪ ♬

Que eu te ensino a namorá ♩ ♫

[ipwntheponies]

Is this geared towards high schoolers or college kids?

[SkepticalCaveman]

Instead of trees, planting bamboo makes more sense for CO2 capture since bamboo grows much, much faster than trees do.

[drewdurant]

No it won’t. When a tree dies the carbon it collects does what… gets released back into the environment