When you look at the social cost of carbon - and there is a lot of ambiguity around that - what you also need to be doing is looking at the benefits of carbon and what that has on increased agriculture production.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Many scientists and economists also say putting a price on carbon through carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade is necessary.
Society has to get a grip and put a tax on carbon. Of course, there is much that flows from that, and it is a complex situation. The small details of something such as climate change are political and social, and they are a lot about fairness and how we rebalance towards a fairer society.
Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.
Money spent on carbon cuts is money we can't use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, HIV/AIDS prevention, health and education infrastructure, and clean water and sanitation.
If you're using first-class land for biofuels, then you're competing with the growing of food. And so you're actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.
Human population supplies the labor necessary for the creation of wealth; carbon supplies the matter and energy.
If you have a carbon cap and trade system, there'd be an agreed-to limit the amount of carbon we emit. That changes the economic picture for fossil technologies and for the renewable technologies. It makes the renewable technologies more attractive and the fossils less attractive.
As is widely accepted, putting a price on carbon pollution is the lowest cost and most efficient way to tackle dangerous climate change.
We don't need a War on Carbon. We need a new prosperity that can be shared by all while still respecting a multitude of real ecological limits - not just atmospheric gas concentrations, but topsoil depth, water supplies, toxic chemical concentrations, and the health of ecosystems, including the diversity of life they depend upon.
The struggle against poverty in the world and the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions all has a single, very simple solution... Here it is: Put a price on carbon.