A few times now I've heard the meme comparing carbon offset credits to Catholic indulgences - where one can "buy one's way out of punishment". I think this argument is completely bogus and that the similarities are superficial at best.
Carbon offsetting is an economic solution to an economic problem. Many people want to live a more green life but don't want to change their habits to do so - many of the things that they want to buy or do (like air travel) don't have (more expensive) carbon-neutral equivalents. Perhaps such equivalents are possible but the demand isn't sufficient yet for them to be practical. But just like the invention of money made trades possible that were impractical with the barter system, carbon credits make it possible for some people to be carbon neutral without everybody having to be so at once.
The key here is that the aim of the exercise is to reduce the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Doing something which adds CO2 and something else which removes it is just as good as doing neither.
Sin, forgiveness and punishment don't work like that, though - doing one good deed doesn't (and shouldn't) make up for an unrelated sin of equivalent value, because (unlike CO2) the total amount of sin isn't a meaningful concept - everyone just cares about the sins that are made against them in particular.
Also, Carbon credits can have a measurable effect whereas it's impossible to be sure just how long you're going to spend in purgatory. So fraud is more difficult (though still possible - we do need to have some way of ensuring that the money spent on Carbon credits is actually being spent on what it is being purported to instead of being squandered and that that activity is having the desired effect).
An aggressive tree planting program, and a aggressive harvesting of older trees (with less carbon change-over power)....brings this entire problem up to the point of being manageable. A number of carbon experts have now started to suggest this simple method of fixing the carbon issue.
Other energy experts absolutely believe that that between nuclear power and green alternative power....that also eases the carbon issue.
The use of carbon credits really becomes this shifting of money operation....with money becoming more important than the actual issue. This is one of the key similarities of the Letters of Indulgence. You didn't acquire the Letters freely....they always had to be bought and paid for....which is the same tactic in this case. Why not just cut out the middleman on this carbon credit game?
What bothers me the most on this entire issue is that you have characters like Al Gore running around....using sixteen times the amount of power of average family....thus triggering massive power requirements. Then I start looking across the entire US....and there are at least 300000 homes in Al's category.....with massive power usage. Alot of these characters are the ones appearing on TV and complaining about our carbon problem....which you start thinking about just how smart these characters are in blaming others for their contribution. Before any of these guys appears on some NPR or CNN interview to discuss carbon credits....I'd like to know their yearly power consumption numbers. If they can't act like regular people....then they need to learn the carbon credit game....the rest of us can feel satisfied that we are living within our standards.
Roy, the whole point of carbon credits is that the money that you spend on them is used to do something that reduces the amount of carbon used elsewhere by the amount that you want to offset - that is why they are not free. Planting trees is, as you suggest, just such an activity.
No middle-man is necessary - all you have to do is find someone who says "if someone gives me $x I can reduce my carbon emmisions by y tons" and give them that money. Carbon credits, like any currency, just make it easier to keep track of the transactions.
As research into green sources of energy takes off, the price of carbon credits (the ratio x/y) will get smaller and more people will offset their carbon usage. At some point, it becomes more economically feasable to use green energy in the first place and the whole system becomes unnecessary.
As for the homes that use 16 times the average - this is still only maybe 10% of the total home energy usage. Making those houses more efficient would help the pollution distribution to be more even, but it's not exactly the low-hanging fruit that we need to be aiming for.
Carbon credits are just one tool in the toolbox, though - and not the best one since (not being compulsary) they rely on people doing the right thing (which not everyone can afford to do without making significant sacrifices). I saw an excellent TED video about some other things governments can do to get greener quicker: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/amory_lovins_on_winning_the_oil_endgame.html
You could both save a lot of time and energy from being expended on this topic if you get an accurate understanding of the effect of carbon dioxide on our atmosphere. You can begin here...http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
Kim, given that Steven Milloy is funded by ExxonMobile, I doubt the neutrality of his site. In particular, for example, he fails to mention the possibility of small increases in CO2 changing the pH of the oceans causing them to release exponentially more CO2. That isn't to say that the case for human-caused global warming is certain, but I'm sure if it was as flimsy as Milloy suggests, nobody would be talking about it at all.
But even if there is no chance of human-caused global warming, there is still reason to fund research into energy sources other than fossil fuels. Sooner or later, fossil fuels are going to run out and we're going to need a replacement energy source. Already terrible wars are being waged over control of these limited natural resources. What better way to fund a replacement than contributions from the people who use the most fossil fuels?