Recently I talked about carbon offsets, an alternative to actually reducing your own personal contribution to carbon emissions, instead paying someone else to compensate for them.

This seems to me like a situation where I litter whenever I want, throwing crap out my car window or trash on the street, but I pay some people to go around and pick up trash.

Or perhaps I drive 100 miles an hour everywhere I go, while I pay other people to drive under the speed limit.

Don't these kinds of "offsets" strike people as naturally hypocritical, even though the net result is an alleviation of the problem?