# Why Venus evolved so differently from Earth?

I read somewhere that the reason why Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect and Earth doesn't is the former's inability to form separate tectonic plates due to slightly higher temperature softening the then-cooling tectonic plate, preventing its fracture and thus disabling the $$\mathrm{CO}_2$$ scrubbing function of tectonic activity, which absorbs $$\mathrm{CO}_2$$ from air by rock weathering and then puts it back into the mantle. And once $$\mathrm{CO}_2$$ is a runaway in the atmosphere $$\text{H}_2\text{O}$$ and $$\text{SO}_2$$ will join forces with it multiplying the greenhouse effect. Therefore, the surface temperature of Venus rose to astonishing values long before life formed on Earth. Is this theory at least possibly correct?

Venus orbits the Sun at 0.723332 AU. As solar radiation follows an inverse square law, the intensity of the Sun at the top of Venus's atmosphere is almost twice that for the Earth ($$\frac1{0.723332}^2\approx1.9113$$). Even when the solar system was young and the Sun was considerably dimmer than it is now, Venus received 1/3 more solar radiation at the top of its atmosphere than the Earth does now. Unlike the Earth, Venus did not suffer a faint young Sun problem.