There’s significant evidence of a “rebound effect” when people are given the chance to signal their virtue or pay off their guilt somehow. That is, they feel ju

There’s significant evidence of a “rebound effect” when people are given the chance to signal their virtue or pay off their guilt somehow. That is, they feel justified in behaving worse than they otherwise would have (in this case, burning more logs than you would have without the offsets). This is a well established physiological phenomenon, though I’m not sure to the extent it has been studied with respect to carbon offsets. So if carbon offsets don’t work well (which I think there is also significant skepticism about), then the net effect here is negative. On balance, it’s probably positive but I don’t think you can make a blanket assertion that skepticism here is counterproductive — it seems quite warranted.