One botanist was shocked to hear a blatantly false claim about plants and dirty energy sources being peddled on social media — so she quickly debunked it.

Botanist and environmentalist Emma (@simpleenvironmentalist) posted a video in response to an "ex-climate activist," who had argued — falsely — that plants "need" fossil fuels to survive.

@simpleenvironmentalist Don't tell a botanist how plants work 😤 #climatechange #botany #plants #savethetrees #trees #climatedenial #climate ♬ original sound - Emma ♻️🥾📚

"Plants have been on the planet far longer than you or I," Emma said. "Far longer, therefore, than the burning of fossil fuels. That means plants can live perfectly fine without humans and without the burning of fossil fuels."

She continued, explaining that plants get plenty of atmospheric CO₂ from animals — including humans — exhaling it. They then convert that carbon into sugars and phosphates for energy, releasing the remaining oxygen into the atmosphere.

This cycle has evolved over millennia, allowing a naturally balanced plant and animal population on Earth to thrive mutually. In fact, the danger to plants has arisen from the upsurge in carbon pollution, which is due to humans burning dirty energy sources at exponentially higher levels since the 19th century.

"In fact, fossil fuels are actively killing plants," Emma explained. "There is so much CO₂ in the atmosphere plants cannot capture and sequester that there is extra, leading to warming, which is killing plants."

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That's not the only negative impact of global heating, either. A hotter atmosphere means that weather conditions are significantly more volatile and intense, leading to hotter droughts, more intense wildfires, and more severe storms.

Agricultural crops are at high risk of destruction from extreme weather, leading to food supply instability and higher grocery prices. And dying plants and animals are reducing the planet's biodiversity, which limits the Earth's ability to bounce back from weather events and atmospheric heating — forming a negative cycle.

Conversely, migrating away from the usage of dirty energy will slow down pollution, helping to mitigate these disastrous effects. It makes the claim that plants need fossil fuels all the more ridiculous.

Commenters were astonished by the ignorance of the false claim. "Did they lobotomize the activist?" one person said dryly.

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Emma agreed: "My head hurts."

"If we get rid of fossil fuels and we switch to green energy, plants will be just fine," she concluded. "They're actually going to be thriving more."

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