Nature itself has already saved humanity from a climate cataclysm, new research finds.

Published today, the study found that without Earth’s complex web of terrestrial and marine ecosystems — known as the biosphere — we would already be seeing far more severe climate impacts than we are now.

Using a state-of-the-art computer model of Earth, the study’s authors — including Conservation International scientists Dave Hole, Johan Rockström, Bronson Griscom and Michael Mascia — simulated how ecosystems, such as mangroves and old-growth forests, absorb and store climate-warming carbon. They then demonstrated how global temperatures would have risen if humanity had gone through the Industrial Age with a biosphere that did not actively absorb carbon pollution.…