To balance or reduce the effect of something by having an opposite effect; as a noun, something that does this balancing.
From "off" and "set," originally meaning a branch that shoots out from a main stem. The sense shifted to something that branches off or counterbalances another thing.
When companies "offset" carbon emissions, they’re trying to balance one action with another, like putting weight on the other side of a scale. The word quietly assumes that opposite effects can cancel each other out—an idea that’s powerful but sometimes controversial.
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