Cooling Down Climate Change, While Heating Up Grocery Bills: ES&T's Top Policy Analysis Article 2012

摘要

By 2100, the world population will pass 10 billion people. How can we sustain that population, while throttling back climate change? Some scientists think part of the answer is to plant forests and grow biofuel crops, allowing us to use land to sequester carbon. But those changes in land use also could crowd out food crops, raising the cost of food. In ES&T's Best Policy Analysis Paper of 2012, researchers model the feedback between the atmosphere, Earth's ecosystems, and the global economy to show that a fossil fuel tax plus incentives for reforestation and biofuels nearly stabilizes the climate by 2100. Unfortunately, the team reports that the trade-off is a hefty rise in food prices.