There are few things someone won’t try to monetize, including carbon offsets, or carbon credits. On first hearing, it may have one thinking NFTs, but on closer inspection, the concept was rooted in a certain tangible give and take.
Sadly, according to a lengthy, in-depth article in The New Yorker, the concept of paying a fee so someone somewhere can plant trees to offset your production of carbon dioxide has, predictably, devolved into something less effective and less observable and more just another money-making scheme for those who first conceived it. The real-world value has been lost in the haze of hard-to-quantify results.
It’s always been easy to think of carbon offsets as the feel-good option— “doing one’s part” without any of the pain of actually doing anything, as opposed to making certain lifestyle changes one might expect would accompany a reduction in one’s carbon footprint.
And then there’s the built-in suspicion that accountability would suffer sooner or later. It seems a palatable fix, though, for fossil fuel companies who pay their fees and then just keep drilling and selling petroleum products, with little regard for whether or not someone somewhere is actually following through and putting a dent in the amount of CO2 being spewed everywhere.
3 Cents' 