There are definitely issues with providing companies with a lot of fuzzy legislation that allow them to effectively dodge taxes. Big companies are good at tax evasion in general. And carbon taxes are just yet another tax with a lot of very sketchy and rushed through rules and legislation where people have lobbied heavily for all sorts of loop holes to be in place.
Carbon offsetting is one of those loopholes. Company X gets to burn a lot of coal/gas/whatever but it's OK because they put some trees in the ground in a place where that absolutely adds no value whatsoever. The trees probably won't be there in ten years. The only thing that counts is the hypothetical and typically vastly inflated carbon offset that this company gets to dodge their taxes with. The higher the better it gets for the tax dodging company. Offsetting is just a fancy word for tax dodging. Mostly it means spend a little to avoid spending a lot.
But take value added tax for example. It's a pretty normal thing around the world and people love avoiding having to pay that. VAT used to be easy to dodge with online shopping: just sell/buy your goods from a place that doesn't charge any VAT and you are good to go. They closed that loop hole years ago and it's a lot harder now. Reason, governments did not like missing out on that income and they closed a lot of the loop holes. So, now when you buy something on Amazon, you pay the appropriate VAT.
Carbon tax is not any different it's a tax and we need to make sure it gets paid by the people and companies that owe it.
There are no easy answers here but taxing definitely inspires behavior for minimizing cost. And sometimes the smart thing just becomes minimizing the carbon intensity because not doing that becomes costly/risky once you close all the loopholes.
Carbon offsetting is one of those loopholes. Company X gets to burn a lot of coal/gas/whatever but it's OK because they put some trees in the ground in a place where that absolutely adds no value whatsoever. The trees probably won't be there in ten years. The only thing that counts is the hypothetical and typically vastly inflated carbon offset that this company gets to dodge their taxes with. The higher the better it gets for the tax dodging company. Offsetting is just a fancy word for tax dodging. Mostly it means spend a little to avoid spending a lot.
But take value added tax for example. It's a pretty normal thing around the world and people love avoiding having to pay that. VAT used to be easy to dodge with online shopping: just sell/buy your goods from a place that doesn't charge any VAT and you are good to go. They closed that loop hole years ago and it's a lot harder now. Reason, governments did not like missing out on that income and they closed a lot of the loop holes. So, now when you buy something on Amazon, you pay the appropriate VAT.
Carbon tax is not any different it's a tax and we need to make sure it gets paid by the people and companies that owe it.
There are no easy answers here but taxing definitely inspires behavior for minimizing cost. And sometimes the smart thing just becomes minimizing the carbon intensity because not doing that becomes costly/risky once you close all the loopholes.