Despite Fridays for Future and various flight shame campaigns, the demand for flights this summer is higher than ever before. Nevertheless, some people are not entirely comfortable with the idea of being jointly responsible for additional CO2 emissions by flying.  So it’s not surprising that offset stores are increasingly coming into vogue, supposedly neutralizing the CO2 footprint. In this type of deal, one often buys the right, in the final analysis, to be credited with part of the savings effects of a climate project, which in most cases was realized many years ago. The calculation of the savings to be realized by the respective project, on the other hand, is often based on periods extending far into the future, so that as many emission credits as possible can be issued.

If this makes you wonder a little, you’re probably not entirely wrong: What contribution do you make to climate protection if you pin the future fruits of past climate protection projects to your lapel? Now we don’t want to question the usefulness of all offset projects per se. And anyone who feels better by concluding such a deal is welcome to do so; after all, it doesn’t do any harm. But anyone who seriously believes that such approaches can even come close to getting climate change under control has failed to recognize the magnitude of the problem. In the end, emissions must actually be reduced today and in the future. And for that, you need mechanisms that provide effective economic incentives. European emissions trading is one such instrument. We believe that Europe should do much more to ensure that other major countries also cooperate in establishing global emissions trading one day.