The other person infers an offset from the term “carbon neutral,” which they wouldn’t infer from “zero carbon.”

The point about the timber plantation would support this not really counting as an offset, but I don’t know how they calculate that. If the lumber for the pulp would otherwise have come from wild forests, I could see it, but I suspect they wouldn’t. The timber plantation has just figured out a very shrewd way to get paid to sow their own product. Frankly, I think that should be fraud unless they can prove a ratio between trees planted as offsets and wild trees not felled, but I don’t know if that would incentivize them more to maintain loggers in natural forests, which is obviously worse. Maybe logging operations shouldn’t be eligible for carbon offsets regardless of how they’re substantiated?

I’m not arguing that offsets are “okay” but they are what I have always understood the term “carbon neutral” to mean. I don’t think very many people understood what I wrote 🤷‍♂️