Certainly not! Offsetting CO2 by financing cookstoves and solar panels, provided they replace fossil-produced energy and are certified, is fine. Forest planting (forest compensation) can also be a way. Be alert to the quality of the organization that offers compensation; Will additional and sustainable forests really be planted with your money? And are the rights of the local population on the land that will now be used for forest plantings sufficiently taken into account? A good article about this is written by Friends of the Earth.

The most important thing is to realize that compensation does not mean that it is no longer necessary to reduce your own CO2 emissions. To achieve the Paris climate goals, we will have to significantly reduce our CO2 emissions worldwide. Because companies like to talk about compensation, there is a risk that they no longer make much of an effort to actually reduce CO2. Read about that for example this article of Milieudefensie. The climate cannot use that distraction. We cannot make it through compensation alone.