Don carbon credits just allow companies to pollute more?
That’s a big, hotly debated issue that we won’t be able to settle here. Our viewpoint is that, no, carbon credits do not allow companies to pollute more. They are designed to encourage investment into projects that can reduce emissions at a lower cost than can be achieved directly by an emitter. So carbon offsets are a device that allows the power and efficiency of financial markets to achieve a desirable social goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the most cost-effective way. More importantly, though, regardless of what you believe or how you feel about the carbon markets, billions (with a B) of dollars are changing hands in the carbon markets every year. Our goal is simply to provide the poorest people in the world access to those markets which otherwise would have been impossible, and in doing so, to re-direct some of the funds changing hands into the lives of those who could really use it.
