https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/10/cop29-what-are-carbon-credits-and-why-are-they-so-controversial

This article looks superficially at COP 29. Why are carbon credits so controversial is the question. Well, pretty easy, they are subject to corrupt practices, they are a way for the wide-eyed boys and other wheeler dealers to make massive profits, ultimately paid by citizens, there's hardly anywhere where they actually work and make the slightest difference to global warming, that planting trees, which are almost all eventually felled for timber cannot make any difference to CO2 levels, and finally if every country is buying credits from every other country, there appears to me to be a logical contradiction here. The market in compliance markets is $900 billion. No wonder they're popular. It's literal trading on hot air. The sociopathic neoliberals' dream trading regime.

NZ intends to meet its Paris obligations by buying 80% of its nominal CO2 reduction from overseas carbon credits. The cost will be humungous and the effectiveness zero. And if every country did this?

And the Paris agreement itself is dead, It was already dead in the water before the Paris meeting finished. In all practical terms, 80% of the human population have already left 1.5 deg C far behind, and by 2030 it'll be 2.0°C for all the Northern Hemisphere.