Carbon credits are one of the biggest scams in our attempts to "clean up". In the same spirit as some industries putting the "recyclable" symbol on everything end everything. "We planted a tree". No you didn't, you paid someone to tell you they planted a tree for you and you don't want to look any close than that.

Companies can keep doing what they do and pay off someone else on the other side of the world for the promise that this third party will do something to compensate for what the company is doing. This is never truly auditable and enforceable, and it doesn't need to be, the point is to have a compliance tick-box that you did your best to clean up your act.

They're just saddling someone else with that "debt", and much like with actual debt, usually it all ends up in a bankruptcy where none of that is ever recovered. Except it's worse with carbon credits where creative accounting is allowed from the start.