So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

Want to offset your carbon dioxide production with houseplants? A LessWrong contributor, dynomight, walks through the math and finds an inconvenient answer. Humans produce roughly one kilogram of carbon dioxide per day. To neutralize that with photosynthesis, you'd need at least eighteen square meters of dense fern leaf and nearly ideal lighting. In a realistic home, that translates to five to ten thousand watts of continuous light—the equivalent of five space heaters running flat out. But the real barrier emerges when you consider the carbon itself. To permanently sequester your daily CO₂ output, your garden would need to grow and be pruned of roughly five kilograms of actual plant mass every single day. The verdict: thermodynamically and practically, it's impossible.

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