How can buying carbon offsets help fight climate change?
The buying and selling of carbon offsets has, for one of the first times, given a value to some aspect of the natural world, in this case the global warming potential of a greenhouse gases or CO2 equivalents. This exciting development has given value to clean technology, intact forests, and other beneficial activities or institutions. For example a stand of tropical forest that can contain up to 1200 tons of CO2 per hectare can now generate income by the sale of the carbon offsets should it be protected. This gives money to local populations and gives them incentive to keep the forest intact. It is also financially viable for project developers to launch projects that help prevent the release of greenhouse gases or introduce more efficient stoves to people in developing countries. None of this would have been possible were it not for people being willing to offset their lifestyles and governments being willing to legislate ‘caps’ on emissions and to allow for the trading of CO2 equival
