[perrygeo]

Good point. I didn't mean to imply that carbon was the only value. The "services" provided by these ecosystems are incalculable.

The myopic focus on carbon is an easy trap to fall into; it's the quantifiable part of the system. In this world, that which gets measured gets managed.

I would hope we'd conserve these ecosystems because of a deeply-held spiritual connection to life. Or at least a realization of the value they provide to humanity by simply existing. But carbon remains the objective metric by which conservation interacts with the financial market.