I liked the idea of carbon offsets until I tried to explain it
The main framework the author presents - will it work if everyone does it? - sometimes produces reasonable results, sometimes not. That&#x27;s the commons for you!<p>Imagine someone in the global North building an annual net-zero home with solar panels. That will not work if everyone does it. There are not enough minerals, not enough land, not enough batteries... it won&#x27;t work for people living in the arctic circle, for hunter-gatherer societies, on and on. Doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s not a good thing to do for the individual guy building the house.<p>In short, the framework proposed by the author is helpful in evaluating things, but not dispositive. He has rightly shown that offsets cannot work for full decarbonization, but so what. No one thing will.