Carbon offsets are tricky. In the current world, that's probably the best you can do, but it's hard to be sure that you're genuinely displacing as much carbon as you want to be. And it certainly won't work for everyone in the world to burn lots of fuel and then make up for it buying offsets.
Anyway, I'm talking about legislative action, rather than individual action -
[Note: I'm assuming (perhaps erroneously) that you're in the USA. If you're not, please pretend for a few minutes that you are.]
What I (and many others) want is, in effect, for it to be mandatory that everyone reimburse everyone else for the harmful effects of their carbon emissions, and for the IRS to mediate all of this.
If the policy is implemented intelligently then you as an individual, don't need to do anything, but as a consumer of goods and services will pay increased prices (the price difference being the amount that you owe society for the harm that your carbon footprint is imposing).
Adapted from [1]:
- A fee is levied on fuels at their point of origin into the economy,
such as the well, mine, or port of entry. The fee is based upon the
carbon content of a given fuel, with a commonly-proposed starting
point being $10–$16 per ton of carbon that would be emitted once the
fuel is burned.
- A border tax adjustment is levied on imports from nations that lack
their own equivalent fee on carbon, increasing the cost of the goods
by an amount corresponding to the (estimated)carbon emitted in their
manufacture. This ensures that American manufacturers remain competitive
in spite of their increased energy costs, and incentivizes nations who
want to sell goods into the USA to put a price on carbon as well.
- The fees collected each month are returned to households as an energy
dividend (eg every resident over 18 years of age gets an equal share).
Returning 100% of net fees results in a revenue-neutral carbon fee-and-
dividend system.
Advocates of this policy tend focus entirely on the teleology of it - the incentive it provides for people and businesses to emit less. The arguments I hear in support of the carbon-neutral aspect of the policy mainly point out that this allows us to tax carbon without upsetting fiscal conservatives who don't want to increase the size of the federal government.
But I think they're all ignoring a more important point. It doesn't need to be about changing people's behavior. To me, it's more about justice. I'm not about to tell wealthy businessmen that they can't fly across the country on a private jet every single week. But if their travels are 10% of the reason that my daughter has to live in a world where food is 10x more expensive because the oceans are dead and agricultural yields have been decimated, shouldn't they have to compensate her? It seems to me that, as long as the size of the fee is set properly, a policy like the one described above would be the fairest and most direct way to achieve that.
BTW, an organization un the USA whose sole mission is to lobby for a policy like this is the "Citizen's Climate Lobby" (CCL)[2]. To me, it seems so sensible that I can't understand why it isn't more widely discussed. It could turn out, I suppose, that implementation of the policy is difficult or impractical, but the discussion never even gets that far. Even the CCL's legislative proposal is, in my opinion, woefully lacking in implementation details.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_and_dividend
[2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/