You can now offset every flight or purchase of clothes. The bad conscience becomes smaller and the earth benefits from it, because somewhere a sustainable project is created. This is exactly how companies that produce a lot of CO2 in their production work. It doesn't matter where the CO2 is emitted and where it is offset, because there is only one earth. Benedikt Dietsch is an editor at the research network Flip and has researched this trade in certificates. In the 457th edition of the "Today important" podcast, he talks about how widespread this trade is: "There is climate-neutral meat, you can offset your flight and entire companies advertise with it: we are climate-neutral. There's always this CO2 offset behind it, they simply buy certificates and states also use this instrument." There is a wide range of offsetting projects, from planting trees to a special feed that is formulated in such a way that the cows emit less methane. There are no limits for your creativity. The main thing is that it is sustainable.

The United Nations play a major role in trading in certificates, they have significantly shaped and built the system. Benedikt Dietsch found out even more: "The UN operates an online shop where people like you and me, but also companies, can offset their emissions for a few cents per tonne of CO2 - with other providers it's several euros. " That's not a problem if you stick to the guidelines: "There is a golden rule of compensation and it says: The climate project must be additional, it can only be done because of these CO2 certificates, because people like you and I spend money there. They argue that we can only build this dam if we get money from the UN for it, otherwise we cannot build it at all and only then will it help the climate," said Dietsch in an interview with "Today Important". -Host Michel Abdollahi.

Together with colleagues from "WirtschaftsWoche", Benjamin Dietsch researched that the United Nations of all things sells worthless certificates and the company concerned even confirmed it: "In the end, the company admitted that they would have built the dam one way or another. The impact is stark, which means that every certificate sold by this project is ineffective, doesn't help the climate and it's not an isolated case." According to Dietsch, it is particularly frightening that the United Nations has a good image and that most people initially trust this organization per se.

So CO2 certificates are not always automatically an appropriate compensation. So the simplest thing would be to save CO2 directly or to research more closely which projects the money from the compensation is going to.

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