The Accounting Paradox: How financial accounting is damaging the world (but can help repair it)

When you think about the tools at our disposal to address the ecological, social and biodiversity challenges we face today, accounting might not immediately come to mind. And yet it is accounting standards, not science and not public policy, that set out how profit is calculated, which in turn drives investment decisions. What if we demanded that those standards reflect the true cost of business and its consequences?

Unless we look again at these fundamental principles, which have gone under...