Abstract
Carbon dioxide is essential to life, and lies at the heart of Nature's riches. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria convertCO2 like chemical factories powered by solar energy. They implement the unique and inspiring mechanisms of photosynthesis, which continue to fascinate all scientific disciplines.
Carbon dioxide is also at the heart of current climate and environmental concerns. Less inspiring than plant activities, human activities are contributing to a sharp rise inCO2 emissions, which in 2021 accounted for almost 80% of the volume of all greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. It is thus partly responsible for climate disruption, which is already affecting species and ecosystems worldwide.
What role can scientific research play in this dual situation? This is a typical example, illustrating the need to combine scientific knowledge with an approach combining the different scales of study of living beings: not only the time and space scales of scientific ecology, but also that of the unitary level of organization of Living Things: from the ecosystem to the individual and then to the very fine scale of the molecule, i.e. that of chemistry. This interdisciplinary cooperation is the source of solutions inspired by Nature and designed for the long term. Some demonstrative examples will be presented.
