Global greening is not a new discovery. NASA satellite observations reported 10 years ago that up to half of Earth’s vegetated lands had experienced significant greening over the preceding 35 years, with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) identified as a major contributor.
In 2016, NASA reported that the increase in leaf area amounted to the equivalent of adding roughly two continental United States’ worth of greenery to the planet.
A decade later, the evidence continues. A 2026 paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, “Vegetation greenness in 2025,” reports record global vegetation greenness, including particularly strong results in croplands. The study reports that 77.6 percent of cropland area experienced a positive greenness anomaly in 2025.
For a world continually told that it is teetering on the edge of ecological catastrophe, a record-green planet seems like something worth mentioning. Plants, apparently, missed the memo that carbon dioxide is supposed to be an environmental villain.
The biology here is elementary. CO₂ is an essential raw material of photosynthesis. Plants combine carbon dioxide, water, and energy from sunlight to manufacture the compounds they need to grow. Increase atmospheric CO₂ and, when other requirements such as water and nutrients are available, many plants respond with increased growth and improved water-use efficiency.
More importantly, this isn't merely a greenhouse experiment. Satellites have measured the effect on a planetary scale.
Other recent research attributed about 70 percent of observed global greening to CO₂ fertilization. Nitrogen deposition was attributed to another 9 percent.
Additional observations reinforce the point. Consider that a 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO₂ from 1982 to 2010 was associated with a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in green foliage cover in warm desert areas.
There is an important distinction here. Evidence that additional CO₂ benefits vegetation does not demonstrate that CO₂ has no effect on climate. Likewise, global greening does not mean every plant, crop, or ecosystem benefits equally. Rainfall, temperature, nutrients, land management, and numerous other factors matter.
But sound science and sound public policy require examining both sides of the ledger. That is where today's climate debate so often goes off the rails.
Climate alarmists and green-energy campaigners routinely discuss atmospheric CO₂ almost exclusively in negative terms. We are told about emissions, warming, tipping points, catastrophes, and the supposedly urgent need to eliminate fossil fuels. Governments spend enormous sums subsidizing wind turbines, solar installations, batteries, and electric vehicles while imposing increasingly costly restrictions on conventional energy.
The benefits associated with increased atmospheric CO₂ rarely receive comparable billing. That omission becomes increasingly difficult to justify when the benefits are visible from orbit.
There is another irony. Modern agriculture, the system feeding more than eight billion people, depends heavily upon fossil fuels. Natural gas is the principal feedstock for ammonia fertilizer. Petroleum fuels tractors, harvesters, and transportation networks. Reliable energy powers irrigation, refrigeration, processing, and distribution.
Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide we have been instructed to regard as a planetary menace is contributing to increased plant growth.
One can debate the magnitude of that benefit. One can debate future warming, climate sensitivity, energy policy and the costs and benefits of different technologies. Those are legitimate arguments. Pretending that the benefit doesn't exist isn't.
For more than three decades, climate politics has been driven by increasingly dire predictions. We have endured an apparently inexhaustible procession of deadlines, tipping points, and declarations that only a handful of years remain to prevent disaster.
Yet here we are, looking down from satellites at a planet that has become greener. This should prompt some humility about the way climate information is presented to the public.
Before governments rapidly dismantle the energy infrastructure upon which modern civilization still overwhelmingly depends, policymakers ought to understand the full consequences, including benefits that rarely make it into political speeches.
The Earth is greener than it was several decades ago. Increased atmospheric CO₂ is a significant reason why. We've known the broad outlines of this for more than a decade, and the satellite evidence keeps accumulating.
Perhaps it's time to notice the good news instead of endlessly preaching planetary doom. And if the public has grown tired of being lectured about the apocalypse, climate campaigners might consider another possibility before blaming “misinformation.”
After 30-plus years of climate doom-mongering, CNN recently reported a poll that suggests people may simply have stopped listening. There’s a lesson there too.
Anthony Watts ([email protected]) is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute.
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