Is photorespiration an effective mechanism for protecting against photoinhibition?

... Is photorespiration an effective mechanism for protecting against photoinhibition? The sessile nature of plants means that they must encounter everything the environment has to throw at them. Most of their life is spent on the resource poverty line, having to make do with what little they have available to them. It would therefore be expected that plants would relish an opportunity to saturate themselves in resources. This is not always the case, the quotation "you can have too much of a good thing" is particularly relevant when talking about a plants response to sunlight. Too little photonic energy will cause photosynthesis to cease and result in starvation as it cannot fix atmospheric carbon, too much will create high energy molecules in the plant capable of doing permanent damage to the photosystems. However plants have not survived for 400 million years without evolving a couple of tricks up their sleeve. In this

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