Jodi Manning, chief executive of the carbon offset nonprofit Cool Effect, said consumers should beware of offset programs that don’t say clearly which project will benefit from your purchase or how much of your money is going to a project. But she said “high-quality” carbon credits can play an important role where emissions are unavoidable. Manning said offsets have to be permanent, transparent, and unable to exist without the offset funding. “When carbon is done correctly, it can provide a credible, immediate way to account for the emissions that travelers cannot otherwise reduce. We all create emissions at some point and it is certainly better to take action to compensate for it than to do nothing,” she said.
