Lots of people are excited about the idea of using plants to help us draw down some of the excess carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere. It would be nice to think that we could reforest our way out of the mess we’re creating, but recent studies have indicated there’s simply not enough productive land for this to work out.
One alternative might be to get plants to take up carbon dioxide more efficiently. Unfortunately, the enzyme that incorporates carbon dioxide into photosynthesis, called RUBISCO, is remarkably inefficient. So, a team of researchers in Taiwan decided to try something new—literally. They put together a set of enzymes that added a new-to-nature biochemical cycle to plants that let it incorporate carbon far more efficiently. The resulting plants grew larger and incorporated more carbon.
Reducing emissions alone may not be enough for the survival of most existing flora and fauna.
The problem is that it will take an extended period of time for nature to pull all of the existing CO2 back out of the atmosphere. We may not survive long enough. The existing plants and whatnot that do it may not survive long enough to recover once its done.
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Believe it or not, I am right there with you on this. There is little to no way that I can see to do this without leaving most plants facing more competition than they can possibly cope with. Maybe start with islands that already have low plant biodiversity, and try to splice as many of each variety of plant there as possible at once? … but that’s all I’ve got.
Spliced Oceanic Algeas would probably just fill the oceans to the point of killing everything else in them.