For over two decades, carbon offset programs have promised individuals and businesses that they can reduce their overall carbon footprint by paying someone else to reduce their carbon emissions. Yet many programs have been plagued by scandal – like shady accounting and paying forest owners not to cut down trees they weren’t planning to log anyway.

A new nonprofit called Climate Vault wants to buy emissions permits from regulated markets and lock them away so other polluters can’t buy and use them. Will this finally be an approach that works? Or are all carbon offset programs just smoke and mirrors?

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