When you purchase a "carbon offset," you are paying someone not to emit carbon that they otherwise would have emitted. You're not getting rid of any actual emissions.
The current marginal cost of offsets is $50/person/year because nobody buys them. But if we all paid each other not to emit any carbon, what would the cars run on? Certainly you couldn't pay a person $50/year to stop using any transportation or power.
> you are paying someone not to emit carbon that they otherwise would have emitted. You're not getting rid of any actual emissions
That link recommends charities that include think tanks and lobbyists influencing policies well beyond paying individuals, and preventing future emissions is obviously currently more effective lower hanging fruit than removing past emissions
> if we all paid each other not to emit any carbon, what would the cars run on?
Most Americans driving their own large inefficient gas vehicles is a solvable policy failure
> you couldn't pay a person $50/year to stop using any transportation or power
luckily for the ~700M people without power, everyone could sustainably use transportation and power; power is obviously dictated even more by institutional decision-making than individual choices
It can include that. But we also don't have a carbon capture method that scales to the point that it could balance out all our emissions, so tree-planting doesn't scale either.
