"Getting companies and utilities to think about carbon dioxide" might have been a first intention, but since then, the notion of offsets has wormed it's way into public expectations, giving the population in general the idea that they can pay a bit more and still do all the air travel they wish. As well, it's morphed into a gigantic financial monster with entanglements all over the world. Nuclear power has succeeded in detaching itself from its associated waste disposal problem, slicing that off into it's own realm of business, with little feedback. With offsets, fossil fuel companies have pulled a similar move in trying to shift their waste problem by attempting to pay the global South to make up for their emissions. But the entire scheme is a fallacy and regulators are (belatedly) starting to catch up and hopefully most of these schemes will end up with fraud convictions. The real goal must be to end fossil fuel uses, but beware- perhaps as much as half the world's population numbers has been made possible by the use of fossil-fuel energy slaves as well as the use of ammonia as a nitrogen fertilizer. We can't run this level of population without those resources, but neither can we go on like this. That's why it's called a predicament instead of just a problem. People in the global North must learn to get by on a FRACTION of their present energy consumption!
"Getting companies and utilities to think about carbon dioxide" might have been a first intention, but since then, the notion of offsets has wormed it's way into public expectations, giving the population in general the idea that they can pay a bit more and still do all the air travel they wish. As well, it's morphed into a gigantic financial monster with entanglements all over the world. Nuclear power has succeeded in detaching itself from its associated waste disposal problem, slicing that off into it's own realm of business, with little feedback. With offsets, fossil fuel companies have pulled a similar move in trying to shift their waste problem by attempting to pay the global South to make up for their emissions. But the entire scheme is a fallacy and regulators are (belatedly) starting to catch up and hopefully most of these schemes will end up with fraud convictions. The real goal must be to end fossil fuel uses, but beware- perhaps as much as half the world's population numbers has been made possible by the use of fossil-fuel energy slaves as well as the use of ammonia as a nitrogen fertilizer. We can't run this level of population without those resources, but neither can we go on like this. That's why it's called a predicament instead of just a problem. People in the global North must learn to get by on a FRACTION of their present energy consumption!