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"Changing land use forever" could easily be "restoring destroyed ecosystem," which is an unequivocal positive if done correctly.

• PaulHoule 3y ago
  In principle yes, in practice it is less clear. CO₂ in the atmosphere is not quite as long-lived as nuclear waste but should be contained for 10,000 years or so. It's plausible you can inject CO₂ underground and it will stay put for that long but not that a forest won't burn up or that people will change their land use again. Also you can measure the amount of CO₂ you injected into a hole and can only guess about the CO₂ that a natural ecosystem absorbed, never mind will absorb. In a developing country there is frequently weak governance and it is not so clear that promised land use changes will happen at all. We should be doing ecosystem restoration and finding ways to pay for it, but I am categorically opposed to carbon offsets for land use changes as they are primarily good for greenwashing and will crowd out effective and measurable carbon credits. (e.g. it only addresses "Scope 1" but Chevron really should be capturing CO₂ from its refineries and storing it underground)