With the exception of autotrophic bacteria, the green, or chlorophyll-bearing, plants are the only living forms on this planet capable of synthesizing organic matter out of inorganic elements and simple compounds.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The truth is, natural organisms have managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet or mortgaging the future.
Living organisms are created by chemistry. We are huge packages of chemicals.
The vast majority of terrestrial species are in fact microbes, and scientists have only begun scratching the surface of the microbial realm. It is entirely possible that examples of life as we don't know it have so far been overlooked.
If you build up the soil with organic material, the plants will do just fine.
Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil.
The photosynthesis we see with plants is not very efficient. Algaes are more efficient.
Chemical compounds of carbon can exist in an infinite variety of compositions, forms and sizes. The naturally occurring organic substances are the basis of all life on Earth, and their science at the molecular level defines a fundamental language of that life.
That's not all our crops can do. We are also learning how to transform plants into factories. We can now raise plants that will create enzymes that would otherwise be created in chemical factories.
Green chemistry is replacing our industrial chemistry with nature's recipe book. It's not easy, because life uses only a subset of the elements in the periodic table. And we use all of them, even the toxic ones.
If you look at the ecological circuitry of this planet, the ways in which materials like carbon or sulfur or phosphorous or nitrogen get cycled in ways that makes them available for our biology, the organisms that do the heavy lifting are bacteria.