>typically attached to doing more than you were doing before.

I'd love to read the details.

Here [0], Easyjet pretend to be offsetting 100% carbon emitted during their flights: https://www.easyjet.com/fr/developpement-durable

Where are the huge Easyjet forests? Planted just so the rich can fly?

I'm sure they have some kind of contract, somewhere, but I can't verify that. And of course any "new" tree can be attached to an offset, that isn't the problem. How can a third-party says that this tree wouldn't have been planted otherwise, when whole world has no choice but go greener/cleaner? All those who make genuine efforts would be stupid not to take the cash (prisoner dilemma). Carbon offsetting is buying time to slow down changes in devastating behaviors.

Are you being willfully obtuse or do you seriously believe the only way (or even the most effective way) to lower carbon emissions is by planting trees?

He's saying when companies buy carbon offsets, they're potentially just giving money to people who would've planted the trees anyway.

Right, but (1) there's no evidence to support this, the whole point of offset certification is to prevent this sort of fraud and (2) there are lots of more effective carbon offset initiatives than planting trees, so of course we shouldn't expect to see massive new EasyJet forests.