What would your profit look like if the planet sent an invoice?

Most of you reading this do not work for publicly traded companies.  As such, you don’t have to publish your company’s performance.  However, you might also appreciate the simplicity in the following proposal.

As we all know, there is a huge gap between corporate pledges versus their actual actions, on environmental sustainability.

As proposed in this article, what if, as part of a company’s various filings, it had to publish its carbon-adjusted profit and loss?  This figure would be calculated using a globally standardized shadow price for carbon (for example, $200 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent).

So, for the quarter, a company might show that it made $US1 billion in profit…..but when they show their carbon emissions against that profit, their adjusted number might be $0.00, or negative.

Bringing the light of day to a carbon-adjusted profit number would, in most cases, be very motivating for companies to proceed with their pledges.

Not a bad idea!