I was kind of expecting some of the stuff in this article, but I was actually amazed that he was able to demonstrate the absurdity of carbon offsets without even getting into sticky topics like corruption (i.e. you pay for a tree to be planted which never gets planted, or the m² of rainforest you "protected" doesn't get cut down today, but in one month).
Someone has described carbon offsets as modern-day indulgences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence) - you pay someone to "wash away" your CO2-emitting "sins", and the less you think about how it works, the better you can feel about it...
Serious question I have about carbon offests with respect to forestry. If you pay me money to not cut my trees and they all burn up in a fire, do you lose your carbon credits, and if so, do I owe you a refund?
I would imagine the requirement to replant the burnt down area would exist. The carbon offset would still exist after replanting, but the time-frame has been shifted to a further future (the time it take the tree to regrow back to pre-burnt size).
Yeah. Because there is a moralistic view that there is no way out—humans are evil and must atone. Any market-based or tech-based approach cannot work because we are dealing with sins.
A lot of armchair environmentalists have this view.
Someone has described carbon offsets as modern-day indulgences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence) - you pay someone to "wash away" your CO2-emitting "sins", and the less you think about how it works, the better you can feel about it...