Setting aside the contentious debate around Cap and Trade or Carbon Taxes as mechanism for dealing with Global Warming, the notion where we put a price on ecological services is an important step in the next frontier of the conservation movement.

For example, the only economic value a tree has is once it is cut down. At the point of harvest, the tree could be turned into paper or used for housing material. We all know trees have more value than paper and board feet. Trees scrub the atmosphere by sequestering and storing carbon, produce oxygen, provide flood control, provide habitat for all sorts of wildlife, just to name a few. These ecological services are important to us all. However, our economic system recognizes these services as an externality.

Putting a price on carbon represents an opportunity to create a new tension point in how we manage our forest. With a price on carbon, we can ask is the tree worth more up than down? In the past, we would look to maximizing revenue from the timber industry. With carbon we can migrate to a model of optimizing revenue from several different sources.

As President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Disregarding for the moment the question of moral purpose, it is safe to say that the prosperity of our people depends on the energy and intelligence with which our national resources are used. It is equally clear that these resources are the final basis of national power and perpetuity." How we used our nation's resources is a function of the values we hold and the questions we ask.

The act of storing carbon in trees and paying for this service means conservation is the beneficiary. Since most of conservation has been funded through philanthropic or governmental money, private capital in conservation represents a new frontier. Bringing private capital into conservation forces the conservation mind-set to look to returns --- both economic and environmental, creating the blended return. As conservation becomes more centered in economics and economics become more focused on purpose --- the blended return becomes a powerful and dynamic proposition, enabling a wider net of available dollars available to create exponential impact.

With the average age of today's landowner at 62, we will see lands change hands, if not possible use over the next two decades. Likewise, both philanthropic and governmental dollars are increasing stretched. By putting a price on carbon, we allow private capital to bring new sources of money to the table. This, in turn, creates a unifying force on a fragmented landscape.

Creating a Cap and Trade market as envisioned in last year's legislative proposal would have created a demand for 1 billion tons of carbon offsets from trees and other biological sources. At a price of $20 per ton, this would have created $20 billion dollars annually to keep a tree as a tree, putting landowners on the front lines of the energy and climate equation.

While a forest has many layers of value, the ripple effect of pricing some of these values will create new sources of money for conservation while producing positive change for generations to come.

Historian Will Durant once said, "Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."