Today's Washington Post casts an enticing angle on the carbon offset futility, "Value of U.S. House's Carbon Offsets Is Murky".

In November, the Democratic-led House spent about $89,000 on so-called carbon offsets. This purchase was supposed to cancel out greenhouse-gas emissions from House buildings -- including half of the U.S. Capitol -- by triggering an equal reduction in emissions elsewhere.

The article explains that little of the funds went to "additionality," or reductions that would not have occurred absent the offset purchase. Here's a puzzling quote by the head of the 5-year old Chicago Climate Exchange, through which the House purchased its offsets.

"It basically rewards people for having done things that had environmental good in the past and incentivizes people to do things that have environmental good in the future," said Richard Sandor, the exchange's chairman and chief executive.

He rejected the argument that the exchange shouldn't sell offsets until it can prove that the pollution reductions wouldn't have happened if the money wasn't paid. "We can't, as an exchange, trade hypothetical things," Sandor said.

That a very strange statement from a finance person. Hypothetical market instruments are traded every second--to reduce risk, for example, as with options, futures, and other derivatives. The value of carbon reductions may be fanatical, but it isn't hypothetical. There are willing buyers and sellers, both of whom value carbon emission reductions (hopefully production-nuetral ones). The problem would seem to be that the green exchanges haven't yet matched these values. Five years seems a long time not to equilibrate.

By the way, $89,000 is 0.000000031 of the federal budget.