I read a letter in today’s Financial Times urging the EU to require balance sheets to “account” for nature. It follows an op-ed on a related topic from a few days ago, and a number of other recent arguments promoting environmental accounting.
Let me get this straight. After more than thirty years of mostly ignoring warnings about an impending global ecosystem crisis, we are persuaded that it is finally time to start accounting for nature? Forgive me, but if these are serious arguments, then denial about our problems runs much deeper than I suspected.
Evidence of the environmental destruction we have caused has been mounting for decades and is mostly incontrovertible. Is accounting for the “value” of environmental damage supposed to make us feel better about doing almost nothing to address it? The rate of change in technology’s impact on the physical world is truly frightening. Meanwhile, our institutions and regulations change at a glacial pace so are decades behind.
Little wonder that society’s response has been so slow and tepid. But environmental accounting? Now? Really? We actually need more evidence?
This is madness!