Government is the problem -- worldwide.
Ultimately the people who go along with these schemes are the problem because they enable government to get them established. The climate scam is a good example. It's not enough that the willing dupes believe when they're told it's the hottest summer on record locally as they're living through lower temps than the summer before. They go the extra to pay for their carbon usage.
There's a guy on my team at work who went on a two week vacation and proudly posted in our team Slack channel how he offset his trip on a site called clear.eco where you can put in your flight details and choose your level of offset for them to soak you. The best part is they soak you more for flying first class over economy. (Apparently being sardined in your seats makes you use less carbon. It's scientific, you know.) Once you tell scammers that you not only go along with their scam, but want to pay extra for their scam, it's full speed ahead.