Carbon offsets are like Diet Coke

They may make you feel better about yourself, but in the end they really don’t do anyone any good. In practice, carbon offsets encourage people to travel more and increase their personal emissions by removing any guilt. The same way you have people drinking 12 Diet Cokes a day, thinking it’s okay because it’s not regular soda. In the end, they both just make it easier for us to avoid the real sacrifices that need to be made.

Offsets have played a growing role in the greening of travel because carbon dioxide emissions from airplanes are growing so quickly and there is currently no technological fix that would drastically lower them.

[via Kottke]