Carbon Offsets
🍄 Glossary
Cap-and-trade laws limit greenhouse gas emissions from major emitters like power plants. These companies, however, have a bit of leeway: to meet the law's requirements, instead of fully reducing their emissions, they can buy "carbon offsets" (often in the form of forest management so trees will suck up the excess carbon.) These offsets are supposed to counterbalance any extra emissions, but there are a lot of issues with this:
This Oregon forest was supposed to store carbon for 100 years. Now it's on fire.