I flew from UK to Canada recently, and KLM was offering to "offset my CO2 emissions" for something stupid like $5. Surely....that's not actually a thing? What can they do for $5 that would offset so much CO2?
Examples: forest protection programs in low-wage countries, investing in renewable energy on high-carbon-intensity grids, distributing enhanced ovens to reduce wood consumption...
Carbon offsetting is cheap currently, but won't always stay so, getting more expensive as we exhaust the low-hanging fruits.
Actually, you can buy carbon credits for less than that if you make bulk purchases. It's usually for preventing emissions from occurring rather than capturing carbon from the atmosphere.
But we couldn't keep this price so low if we scaled this to world emissions - the price of carbon offsetting is low now because we're still picking the low-hanging fruits of carbon offsetting.
The quality of offsetting programs varies drastically. For example, if I just say I'm going to offset your emissions then do nothing, I can offer that service for $1EUR/ton. At the other end of the spectrum would be something like methane recapture tents over abandoned mines, where there is no risk of addition or gaming (because it costs so much to build mines in comparison to what this earns). And in the middle is something like planting trees. It's not clear where on the quality spectrum the program you're referring to is, but I would guess it is not going to be at the high end.
The other thing to keep in mind is that we are only looking at low-hanging fruit right now. That's actually one of the really appealing things about this climeworks idea. It can be scaled indefinitely. Carbon capture from mines and manure digesters can only scale so much, because there are only so many abandoned mines and only so much undigested animal manure.
That doesn't make sense. Wouldn't that even be a boon?
You would end up with less resistance by those who proclaim doom by empirical evidence, as a provided solution theoretically would exist.
If you actually care about an actual threat, yes, that would be awesome. My point is that the most vocal advocates aren't that, that they want restrictions on fossil fuels regardless of AGW and this is just the latest pretense, so they have to demonize any easy way out.
Carbon offsetting is cheap currently, but won't always stay so, getting more expensive as we exhaust the low-hanging fruits.