Question about carbon offsets - do they actually work or are they just guilt money?

I was in Portland last year at a climate meetup and someone brought up that they bought offsets for their whole vacation. Everyone around the table nodded along but one guy spoke up and said most offset programs are basically scams. He pointed to a study that claimed 70% of credits from certain providers don't actually reduce emissions. I've been sitting on this for months now and I can't decide if buying offsets helps real projects or just lets people feel better about flying. Has anyone here dug into the actual numbers on specific offset programs? Like did you find one that's actually legit or is the whole system broken?

3 comments

3 Comments

matthewgonzalez1d ago

Honestly I dug into this pretty deep after that same study hit my feeds. Looked at Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard programs specifically because they seemed to have the best reputation. Found some small forestry projects in developing countries that actually do seem to work based on third party audits. But the bigger issue is that even the good programs just delay emissions not really stop them. A tree planted today takes decades to absorb what a flight pumps out this year. And nobody tracks if those forests stay protected long term or get cut down later. So Ngl it feels like the whole system is a bandaid on a bullet wound.

the_james1d ago

Oh man, you're mostly right but I gotta push back on one thing... the timing thing about trees taking decades. That's actually not quite how it works for all projects. Some forestry stuff focuses on avoiding deforestation instead of just planting new trees. Like protecting a mature rainforest that's already storing carbon right now, not waiting for saplings to grow. Those projects can have immediate impact because you're preventing emissions that would happen this year if the forest got cleared. But yeah, the permanence problem is real... I've seen studies showing something like 30% of offset projects fail to keep forests standing after 5-10 years. It's kind of infuriating honestly.

willow_martin1d ago

So about that 30% failure rate, are those mainly the avoided deforestation projects or the tree planting ones?