making it worse

MANY readers profess puzzlement as to how carbon offsets could fail to reduce one's carbon footprint. The answer is that they probably do reduce one's carbon footprint, but by nowhere near the one-for-one ration that seems to be implied by the extraordinarily low price of carbon offsets. Unless they are implemented under a cap-and-trade system, these sorts of environmental efforts are plagued by something called the rebound effect, which is to say that using more efficient technologies causes the price to fall, which causes people to use more of the carbon-emitting substances in question. This is particularly true in markets for things like electricity, which are characterised by monopoly providers and extremely high fixed costs for existing plant, making it unlikely that carbon emitting generators will actually be taken offline (and made worse by the fact that the dirtiest power is supplied by the baseload plants, which are least likely to be taken offline). If you are salving your conscience by buying carbon offsets, which allows you to cheerfully emit 20 times more than the average person, then even a conservatively estimated rebound effect means that carbon offsets are increasing the amount of emissions. *

Economics.