Fossils show huge carbon emissions harm forests, not ‘green the planet’

Study of 56m-year-old leaves counters claims from Trump administration members of ‘benefits’ of fossil fuel pollution Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet. An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56m years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate. The current galloping pace of carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is unmatched in historic and prehistoric records but the PETM, when huge amounts of carbon were released over a 130,000-year period and the world heated up by as much as 8C (14F), is the closest comparison. The authors of the new paper found this prehistoric change caused a retreat in the forests that blanketed the Paleocene-Eocene world, causing them to die off as the Earth browned rather than greened, a finding they state has “chilling implications” for today’s wo