I'm a little confused about the cement example. Every inch of rainforest is preserved in year 0, so those factories can produce their ridiculous amounts of CO2

I'm a little confused about the cement example. Every inch of rainforest is preserved in year 0, so those factories can produce their ridiculous amounts of CO2 to compensate for the now-safe rainforest. That works IMO since the annual capture of an acre of rainforest is equal to one emission-credit worth of factory. (If that's not how the math works out then that is a fundamental problem that can be solved.) That's all year 0. The author forgot about year 1, 2, 3, etc. where those factories would still need to offset their production. Where are the offsets for those years? The article also neglects some of the point of paying money for offsets, which is paying to research those alternatives that are required to get to true net-zero or negative emissions. They are VC for science that could solve the problem, funded by those causing the problem.