You’re precisely right and it’s not a small problem.

Overall, the focus is on emissions as “the problem” rather than “producing and burning fossil fuels” as the problem. Although subtle, it is misdirection, as it pushes our attention in the direction of the emissions problem (hence offsets etc) rather than solving the fundamental problem, which is stopping fossil fuel production.

I’ve been told that engineers spend a long time on problem definition, as it avoids creating fake solutions to fake problems. I’m not an engineer but I love them.