Green is a Two-Way Street: The Greening of the Planet

By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Green is a Two-Way Street: The Greening of the Planet

By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

For years, we have been treated to a relentless cadence of ecological doom. Every heatwave, every seasonal storm, every drought and every patch of dry soil is pressed into service as evidence of an unfolding planetary catastrophe. Yet, as the headlines grow more apocalyptic, the actual landscape outside our windows tells a radically different story. The Earth is quietly, unmistakably turning greener.

According to recent findings published in Nature, global vegetation greening hit a dramatic new record, extending an impressive multi-decade upward trend. Specifically, 2025 marked a high-water mark for global foliage, with the upward trajectory actually steepening. At the top of this list are croplands, accounting for 77.6 percent of the extra greening observed.

Despite this flourishing reality—driven in large part by the much-maligned fertilizing effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the fertilizers made from hydrocarbons, you will search the mainstream commentariat in vain for a celebration for the abundance of greening vegetation and the growth of inexpensive energy. Instead, the narrative remains locked in a loop of over-managed panic, guarded jealously by what can only be described as the Green Industrial Complex.

Chris Morrison recently laid it out in The Daily Sceptic. The same outlets that breathlessly amplify every flood, fire, or heat wave somehow miss the largest, most consistent biological response on Earth. One Telegraph columnist, Tim Stanley, recently claimed that one-third of Bangladesh’s agricultural production “is feared to vanish by 2050.” The fear is invented. Actual production in that country has more than doubled since the turn of the century. Data and observed reality are treated as optional when the environmental narrative demands catastrophe.

It is a striking claim, particularly because it is entirely untethered from the facts on the ground. Bangladesh has seen its agricultural production more than double since the turn of the century. As Stanley earnestly advised his readers, “The evidence is stacking up—we only have to look out of our windows.” How can climate reporters be any more embarrassingly simplistic?

Indeed. For those reasoning adults willing to look past ideological blinders of Green, the evidence suggests that climate journalists hired to broadcast anxieties should perhaps steer clear of empirical science and energy, where data and hard measurements outrank catastrophist fiction.

Climatologists and botanists track this botanical renaissance using two primary satellite methodologies: the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which measures surface greenness, and the Leaf Area Index (LAI), which estimates total leaf area.

The real, increasingly verdant world documented by Nature-published scientists presents a distinctly upbeat picture. Herbaceous ecosystems, including grasslands and crop fields, dominate the greening signal. Fully 72.1 percent of grasslands show measurable greening, while overall satellite data reveal that nearly 68 percent of the planet’s total vegetation area has improved, edging past the previous year’s record.

Greening hotspots span the globe, from southern Africa, southern South America, and northern Australia to Europe, central North America, and northern China. Where browning has occurred—such as in parts of eastern Siberia—scientists attribute it not to imaginary firestorms, but to anomalously cold growing-season temperatures.

From a Midwest vantage point, the pattern is familiar. Heartland farmers already understand that more CO₂ and modest warming have lengthened growing seasons and lifted yields. They see it in their fields. Satellite data simply confirm what practical Heartland people have observed for years. The same CO₂ that is painted as poison is the plant food making more calories available to a growing world population. Energy abundance and food abundance travel together. Policies that deliberately constrain reliable energy in the name of climate purity also constrain the very prosperity that lifts people out of hunger and energy poverty.

As mentioned, they assess different variables of plant vitality, both datasets converge on the same profound conclusion. Over the past four decades, the Earth has experienced a significant increase of more than 15 percent in global greening. Crucially, mainstream scientific consensus traces over 70 percent of this surge directly to carbon dioxide fertilization.

More carbon in the atmosphere has essentially acted as an aerial fertilizer, helping plants use water more efficiently and driving a historic expansion of the biosphere.

Why, then, is this planetary flourishing treated like state secrets in an Orwellian ministry? A recent heatwave? Regional droughts?

The answer lies in who gets incentives: Green NGOs or farmers of the plant. The theory is if the world is experiencing a catastrophic climate emergency that requires massive bureaucracies, punitive carbon taxes, regulatory overreach, and perpetual crisis management. A world experiencing a biological boom driven by abundant energy and plant food is an inconvenient truth for a hyperbolic Green industry built entirely on non-existent energy scarcity and environmental fear.

We are essentially being told we face a cataclysmic crisis in spite of the fact we have too much vegetative life—threatened by bumper crops, expanding grasslands, and a robustly green productive biosphere. If the climate emergency fails to materialize in the soil and the crops, the entire environmental architecture of the climate grift begins to wobble.

Perhaps it is time we stopped listening to the professional reporters of doom, looked out our windows, and finally noticed the green and flourishing world right in front of us.