Offsets are tradable credits from projects that claim to reduce emissions, either by avoiding them or by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Businesses and countries trade these credits — each representing the equivalent of one tonne of CO2 — to ‘neutralize’ their own emissions.
Although conceptually appealing, this reliance on offsets has fatal flaws. In practice, it’s difficult to ensure that they represent real emissions reductions rather than ‘hot air’, with the claimed climate benefits existing only on paper. Equally challenging is ensuring that emission reductions are ‘additional’, meaning that they would not have occurred without the incentive provided by the sale of carbon credits. (…)
This results in more emissions, delays the phase-out of fossil fuels and diverts scarce resources to false solutions.
Uh yeah. Credits were invented to give the appearance of action and to keep people buying.
If you need an explanation for why buying symbolic coins isn’t helping, I have a bunch of symbolic coins to sell you.
