After more than three decades on Wall Street, Tom Montag thought he’d seen most forms of financial wizardry. Then Hank Paulson asked him to tackle carbon offsets. …The goal was to “unleash as much carbon finance as possible,” Montag said. But a string of scandals threw the anticipated boom into question. …Prices for carbon offsets tracked by MSCI peaked in 2022, when Paulson recruited Montag, and have been on a downward trajectory since. …Montag and other backers on Wall Street haven’t blinked. They’ve remained convinced companies and governments will eventually embrace carbon offsets as an indispensable climate solution in a world racing to reach net zero emissions. And last month, Rubicon signed a deal with Microsoft Corp., one of the world’s largest offset buyers, to generate credits from a tree-planting project in Panama. …Offset bulls recently scored big wins. The US  just issued the US government’s first-ever official blessing of the credits.