This post was updated on November 4, 2021. Do we really need to talk about carbon offsets? Yes: They're in the news a lot lately, and it's time we talked about them. Fine. What are they again? Let's start with the basics. Deforestation — a major driver of climate change — is driven by financial incentives: If you cut down a tree, you can sell the wood to buy things and plant, say, lucrative crops in its place. What offsets do is to change the math by creating financial incentives for protecting forests, essentially making the trees more valuable alive than dead. By paying people to keep carbon-absorbing forests alive, you can compensate for carbon pollution made elsewhere, while protecting wildlife and local communities in the process. That … doesn't sound that simple. It's pretty complicated, actually, and it took some time to figure out.…