Carbon offsetting: The new "Indulgences"?

I was initially supportive of the whole cap-and-trade approach to "sustainability," but the way it's working out in practice (rich Westerners buying off their guilt by encouraging third-worlders to continue living in unmechanized squalor) reminds this former Western Civ teacher much too much of the Reformation-era abuses of Indulgences. I realize I'm not the first person to come up with that analogy, but it seems increasingly apt. Still haven't figured out where that leaves me in terms of my own preferred "sustainability" solution, but cap-and-trade doesn't seem to be the answer.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3788/