WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Swamp Thing: New Roots #5, by Mark Russell, Marco Santucci, John Kalisz and Dave Sharpe, available now.
If there's a DC character that could solve any problem in the DC Universe, it's Swamp Thing. As a plant Elemental of the highest order, he could end world hunger, construct civilization in harmony with nature, and prevent predatory people and corporations from exploitation. Swamp Thing resembles more of a God than a superhero. While he's considered saving humanity in the past, he's faced increasing alienation with each year of modernization. He sees saving humans as an annoyance that he has avoided or abandoned until now.
In Swamp Thing: New Roots #5, Swamp Thing is confronted by a horrifying truth. The Sunderland Corporation has plans to mass-produce Swamp Thing's children and is selling them for free labor. When Swamp Thing finds out about this, he stormed the Sunderland Corporation during a press conference. One of his children is shot, and Swamp Thing holds his child in his arms as it dies.
Swamp Thing peacefully tells the crowd of spectators and members of Sunderland Corporation that he didn't come here to kill anyone. Instead, he came here to appeal to the common sense of a greater good. Swamp Thing tells the press with cameras rolling that if they genuinely want a better life, he can build it for them. If humans wish to better themselves and their families, they have to choose. They can either stay on the path of death and destruction or abandon violence and forge a new society alongside Swamp Thing and his surviving "child."
Swamp Thing's decision to integrate society and nature is one that he has considered and even tried before but given up on. Swamp Thing is an ecological creature who holds the cure for humanity's ailments like hunger, sickness, and inequality. But through the years of industrial production, Swamp Thing has been pushed aside and even demonized. He could force humans to stop their production, but that is against his principles. Swamp Thing believes that humans must forge their path and decide for themselves. Swamp Thing stipulates that if humans abandon their ways and methods and embrace something new, he'd help and that he sees no need to help until that point.
Swamp Thing's unexpected fatherhood has undoubtedly changed Swamp Thing's view on human integration in this title's continuity. Now that he has his offspring, the conflict between man and ecology doesn't just affect him but affects his children. Under the current system, his children are seen as commodity production. However, if people agree to Swamp Thing's proposal, both he and his children can live in harmony with humans.
If Swamp Thing succeeds in his plan of integration, he could solve many of the greatest problems facing the DC Universe. While Swamp Thing's promises could answer a great number of seemingly unanswerable questions, people would have to both want and accept this new way of life. Humans day to day lives and relationships with nature would fundamentally change, and the powerful would have to relinquish power.
Swamp Thing and his children can save the world, but Swamp Thing also has serious personal obstacles. As The Saga of Swamp Thing has shown us, he doesn't have the patience for humans to decide if it wants to save itself.