It's so crazy when you dig in to it. Take some protected forest, then claim "uh actually we are going to bulldoze this unless you buy our carbon credits" then vastly over calculate how much carbon is stored, sell it off as credits for not bulldozing it, and then a few years later, sell the same forest again for credits.

And then consumers think they are all cool and good because their flight was "offset". Carbon offsetting is not real. If your product or consumption is creating greenhouse gasses, the only solution is to stop consuming it until it becomes more efficient itself rather than rely on accounting trickery.

Yes, actual net zero would involve removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is impossible at the scale these companies require. The equipment doesn't exist beyond a few tiny demonstration projects, and if it did it would cost 100x what the companies want to pay.

Offsets are like me offsetting the cost of a night out by buying a coffee machine to help my wife to skip Starbucks. The bank balance still goes down.

I've found out that I can fly 1,000 times net zero per year if I offset that by not flying another 1,000 times.

It's that simple.