array9

The 'good guy' wins?  This may possibly be true over the very very long term.

But it is not so obvious.

Consider grasses and trees.  Trees do not have to be that efficient to wipe out grasses, even if grasses are very efficient with resources.  They only have to be able to get above the level of grasses and cut out the sun light.

Indeed one might think that the specialisation of coping with height, might hinder their efficiency.  Smaller percentage of material devoted to photosynthesis?

The fact is that the technology of the plant, may be more competitive than its resource efficiency.  The trees deny resources to the grasses, which in turn may make the grasses even more efficient.  But I doubt if it helps.

Maybe cold blooded animals are more efficient than warm blooded animals, but it won't help them much either.

The trees are the large dinosaurs of the plant world.  The grasses have to find some way of fighting back perhaps.  I guess we call it agriculture.  Make yourself indispensable to man.

It seems funny that so many people think of trees as the way to de-carbonise the earth's climate, whereas I am thinking that it would be better to look at those other plants that the trees bullied.  And remember that the grasses probably bullied lots of even smaller things.  Trees may be the last thing one should champion.

Martin