“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.”
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I'm no expert on American politics.
If we invest in researching and developing energy technology, we'll do some real good in the long run, rather than just making ourselves feel good today. But climate change is not the only challenge of the 21st century, and for many other global problems we have low-cost, durable solutions.
We worry about the seemingly ever-increasing number of natural catastrophes. Yet this is mainly a consequence of CNN - we see many more, but the number is roughly constant, and we manage to deal much better with them over time. Globally, the death rate from catastrophes has dropped about fifty-fold over the past century.
The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, it's hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line.