You missed the obvious larger problem with offsets: green washing. By giving people the ability to absolve themselves of guilt, they may change their behavior in response. Taking that extra flight, buying that new vehicle, owning the larger house. If (a) is true, then the existence of the offset is actually harmful.
Huh? The point of offsets is to reduce carbon. I don’t care about the effect on you personally. If their existence causes more carbon through a combination of: a) ineffective programs and b) secondary physiological effects, then no one should support them (and ideally, they would just be disallowed by regulators — as it would be both in consumers and environmental interests — and replaced with mechanisms and incentives that actually work).
For clarity: I think they probably do work and there’s value there, but I think there are good reasons to be skeptical and evaluate carefully.
