I totally agree with you, but I think it helps people to be able to connect environmental preservation with their own lives and actions. I think that personal carbon monitoring and offsets helps people to make that connection.

you've been reading my mind (or my posts)!

you can give $ to "plant trees and improve water quality, increase wildlife habitat and help restore public lands damaged by natural disasters such as wildfires", and people do, but not in the numbers that we'd like to see.

Elsewhere I mentioned that there is no point to call  them "carbon" offsets and we could easily switch to calling them something simple like "environmental protection credits" or "ecological credits".  But carbon is in the center of the the environmental "movement" these days.  There's also a lot of it, so it makes for a big market.

The whole point is to eventually move into a completely open market for ecological goods and services like habitat, water filtration, buffering, etc.  The offsets serve as the intermediary to that realization.

I was starting to come around to accepting the value of carbon -- and other -- offsets, but I'm worried about one thing.

If people start volunteering a LITTLE BIT of money to preserve national forests, will the Republicans see it as a green light to cut ALL federal funding for preserving national forests?

However much I hate slippery slope objections, I'd like to know whether this could be a serious problem. Opinions?

Forward!

What a potential racket this is!  Looks out for all kinds of sweet deals, kick backs, cooking the books, rules written by lobbyists, and political corruption.  Everybody and their dog is going to jump on this bandwagon.  Where's mine?

The market for "offsets" almost certainly will be taken advantage of by scammers, dirty politicians, etc.  Good deeds rarely go uncorrupted by others to some degree.  Look what happens to humanitarian aid, for example. But that does not negate the need for more "good deeds" - especially since most are not undermined by the selfish.

I still would also like to see a carbon tax or pollution tax or energy waster tax. . .

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Ghandi

now offers a credit card offering offset points instead of miles. "Spend $750/month with our card and offset all your carbon emissions!"

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Created by "THEM" over there (the yellow and brown hordes we're told to fear) to make the stuff you bought with your charge card -- that's THEIR emissions, not "yours."

Gotta keep shoveling the coal into the firebox on this runaway train, don'cha know ... keep buying, keep consuming, keep spending, and for God's sake don't question whether such "progress" and "growth" is actually taking us further and further down the wrong path ...

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.