Something like an anti-environmental voucher, carbon offsets are acquired or purchased through participation in a pro-environment activity. Or, at least, activities that are supposed to help the environment. We gotta be honest, sometimes we don’t follow up on each and every offset out there. That would be a lot of work.
Anyway, offset credits can be used to allow companies to buy their way out of actually reducing their harmful greenhouse gas emissions. While this may sound illogical, we can assure that it is not. From the standpoint of the corporations responsible for the polluting, it makes perfect sense. Try it out for yourself and you’ll see.

Carbon offsets in 3 easy steps:

Acquire carbon offsets by purchasing or doing something good for the environment.

Continue harming environment.

Acquire more carbon offsets.

Fact 1:

While it is true that offsets act as a huge loophole allowing big polluters to not actually have to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions, it is also true that the cheetah is still the fastest land mammal on Earth. So there. We are very pleased that this issue can finally be put to rest.

Fact 2:

Proposed cap and trade systems would create new markets for carbon credits worth ga-zillions of dollars. Filling this new financial bubble with low-quality offsets is a great idea. Because we all know that there is no way that an economic bubble could ever burst due to sub-prime stuff in it. In addition, we firmly believe it’s best just to smile and nod…and not try to remember the last 18 months.