The only carbon offsets that should be permitted are direct air capture of the CO2 you're emitting. This forces all but the most difficult to avoid CO2 emissions to alternatives (at the current price of $600/ton per Climeworks). Emit, but pay the true cost to capture and permanently sequester (on human time scale) what you're emitting.
Anything else is the equivalent of indulgences. Forests can be clear cut or burned after being paid to not be, etc.
> The only carbon offsets that should be permitted are direct air capture of the CO2 you're emitting.
That's not an "offset" - that's just a system that doesn't emit CO2. Offsets are when you decline to reduce CO2 emissions, instead paying someone else to <mumble>.
Offsets were always a scam. As I recall, they were sold to us with the promise that carbon "prices" were introductory, and were supposed to go up quickly and dramatically. At any rate, the whole idea of a "market" in carbon emissions is silly, because the price of the underlying asset is set by governments.
How do you not emit CO2 when producing cement? The only way to be carbon neutral is to "offset" it by having some carbon capture industry to somehow remove the equivalent of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Anything else is the equivalent of indulgences. Forests can be clear cut or burned after being paid to not be, etc.