this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Trees also consume it and they can technically live forever
No they can't, at least not in general. The longest lived, easiest to date, life has been trees, but there's no suggestion that they'll survive climate change
Most trees have live spans in the low hundreds of years
There is no definitive proof either way. Fact is that they can live a long, long time. The oldest known trees are close to 5000 years old. There's even a clonal system estimated to be 80.000 years old. https://www.bbcearth.com/news/can-trees-really-live-forever
Fact is that a tree is much more likely to die from external factors than from old age. It cannot be proven, but it is certainly not impossible that (some) trees are immortal under the right circumstances.
We have an eco system in southern Australia that at the moment is eucalyptus trees. They take over all at once after a fire, and they live about 300 years. When they die off rainforest trees and undergrowth take over, until there's a dry period and fire