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“It’s a really dangerous distraction because it distracts us from analyzing what we can do much more meaningfully,” said Kate Ervine, associate professor of global development studies at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Although individual activities have environmental costs and flying is one of the most costly, climate change is largely driven by the actions of the fossil fuel industry. And the vast majority of carbon offsets are bought by companies, including the fossil fuel companies themselves, on the assumption that they can meet their “net zero” emissions targets without fundamentally changing the way they work.

The main problem with carbon offsets is that “you’re trading a known amount of emissions with an indefinite amount of emissions reductions,” said Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project at the University of California, Berkeley. “But there’s also the whole trade approach, where companies can buy ways to get rid of their responsibility to reduce their own emissions.”

The types of programs that depend on offsets are valuable in themselves and are even necessary to mitigate the damage already done by decades of greenhouse gas emissions; The sticky part is using them to justify further emissions. Even if we can calculate exactly how much carbon a new tree grove will absorb, linking its cultivation to more carbon emissions will only keep levels stable and we need them to come down.

Many experts say that, in principle, offsets can be valuable. Professor Usher, for example, cited the cement industry as a good candidate for an offset programme, as reducing emissions from the cement industry is a more expensive and technically complex task than, for example, converting electricity generation to renewable sources.

But programs will have to be designed and managed very differently than they are now, and consumers will have to pay more than a few dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide they currently make.

“If you were to reinvent the entire industrial structure, if you were to focus on a subset of activities and accept prices much higher than today, then I think the answer to your question is ‘Yes, we can do that,'” he said. Danny Cullenward, director of policy at CarbonPlan, a nonprofit climate research organization. “If the question is can we produce something meaningful at $5 a ton, I think the answer is no.”

For now, the best an individual can do remains the same: Try to spread less.

Certifications from observer groups, such as: gold standard and green-e It can help identify valuable projects. “But think of it as a donation,” said Dr. Haya, “not as buying credits to cover your emissions.”