I agree that the concept of "buying time" has merit. One good way to apply that would be a cap-and-trade system, with a gradually shrinking cap. Trading offsets within a cap-and-trade system avoids the criticisms I'm making.

But I see a lot of companies trumpeting use of offsets in the context of their own individual plan to achieve reduced or zero emissions. This is where the problems come in:

1. It is often presented as a a complete solution, rather than a helpful interim step. A company announces plans to offset their emissions, and then declares victory. But it is only a half victory; between the offset seller and the offset purchaser, only half of the total emissions have been addressed.

2. It removes the incentive to start developing solutions for the more difficult categories of emissions. It will take time to decarbonize, say, steel manufacturing. But we need to start developing pilot projects today. If the steel manufacturers can say "we're addressing climate change, we've purchased offsets", then no one is paying for those pilot projects.

I shared some more thoughts about this in an older post: https://climateer.substack.com/p/focus-on-2050.