Plants "on death row"

Thousands of species of plants, despite having survived hundreds of other climate minima, optima and goodness knows what else over the last few million years, are suddenly going to disappear thanks to our capitalist SUVs spouting "carbon pollution" (© Penny Wong) into the atmosphere:

"We were struck by the conservatism of plants - how rarely they were able to adapt and flourish outside of their ancestral environments," said Dr Weston, of the Botanic Gardens Trust.

This made it likely that many species would have trouble surviving if their current habitats shrank as a result of climate change, he said. [Climate is always changing ... if you can't adapt, you won't survive - that's evolution - Ed]

Those least likely to go extinct were plants with short life cycles and that spread easily - both characteristics of weeds.

"Weeds will be the beneficiaries of climate change," Dr Weston said.

Check out Invasion of the Killer Weeds (© ACM)

Read it here.