Carbon offsets do make sense but only after low hanging fruits have been picked. In other words, only when we are over 50% renewables - carbon offsets would make a difference. The reason being is that the next 50% would need extra investment and effort.
The only carbon offsets that should be permitted are direct air capture of the CO2 you're emitting. This forces all but the most difficult to avoid CO2 emissions to alternatives (at the current price of $600/ton per Climeworks). Emit, but pay the true cost to capture and permanently sequester (on human time scale) what you're emitting.
Anything else is the equivalent of indulgences. Forests can be clear cut or burned after being paid to not be, etc.
> The only carbon offsets that should be permitted are direct air capture of the CO2 you're emitting.
That's not an "offset" - that's just a system that doesn't emit CO2. Offsets are when you decline to reduce CO2 emissions, instead paying someone else to <mumble>.
Offsets were always a scam. As I recall, they were sold to us with the promise that carbon "prices" were introductory, and were supposed to go up quickly and dramatically. At any rate, the whole idea of a "market" in carbon emissions is silly, because the price of the underlying asset is set by governments.
How do you not emit CO2 when producing cement? The only way to be carbon neutral is to "offset" it by having some carbon capture industry to somehow remove the equivalent of CO2 from the atmosphere.
From what I have read, one of the issues though is that there are only a finite number of trees that can be planted on the earth so carbon offsets of that nature are in a sense a one-off thing available to humanity - they buy us some time but aren't a sustainable solution by themselves.
