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I'm not completely sold on it myself. I don't see how we can buy ourselves out of a toxic world. Paying indirectly to fund the planting of trees or renewable energy projects should not be a ticket to pollute.
If anything should be done, governments should remove subsidies to the oil and gas industry, consumers pay the real cost of fuel, and force companies to pay into a research fund for any excesses in carbon emissions. Paying into the fund will also entitle these companies to any returns or profits made off of technologies that might be developed out if it.
Carbon offsets are like lotteries. People only pay into them out of self-interest. Underneath, there is a social benefit. In the case of lotteries, a number of charities benefit. With carbon offsets, the environment. But they only exist for selfish reasons: lotteries offer the dream of being rich; carbon offsets assuage guilt or gives someone a sense of entitlement when it comes to environmental damage. But wouldn't this work much better if we were directly charitable, and environmentally aware?
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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