Forest offsets typically depend on a counterfactual — the idea that if you didn’t buy the offset, the forest would be cut down. So a lot of people who wouldn’t have cut the forest down sell offsets, resulting in no change to atmospheric carbon, but giving permission to others to burn fossil fuels.
And yes, you could rent in a different place from one time period to another, but CO2 concentrations remain elevated for hundreds of thousands of years when you burn fossil fuels, and firms don’t bother with planning for forest-based sequestration over that time period, typically settling for a contract covering only a few decades. So there’s an inherent mismatch between the offset contract and the duration of the damage they do.
Forest offsets typically depend on a counterfactual — the idea that if you didn’t buy the offset, the forest would be cut down. So a lot of people who wouldn’t have cut the forest down sell offsets, resulting in no change to atmospheric carbon, but giving permission to others to burn fossil fuels.
And yes, you could rent in a different place from one time period to another, but CO2 concentrations remain elevated for hundreds of thousands of years when you burn fossil fuels, and firms don’t bother with planning for forest-based sequestration over that time period, typically settling for a contract covering only a few decades. So there’s an inherent mismatch between the offset contract and the duration of the damage they do.
Yes, that’s why I’m saying, the companies just have to rent in perpetuity. Also, yeah you can’t rent forest carbon unless it’s sinking it that year.