Climate goals: Can investor activism deliver what govts could not?

The moves by investors and accounting innovations by economists and auditors could make a critical difference on the margin. Call it Plan B; there is no Plan C, writes T N Ninan

Company accounts are in the red (loss) or black (profit). Increasingly, though, they may be going green – to track the impact of the firm’s activities on the environment. The back story is that a bunch of global investors issued a warning this week to the big four accounting firms that dominate global corporate audit work: Get your act together on the issue, or face investor activism to stop you from doing auditing work at the companies they invest in.
 
Meanwhile, economists like Cambridge University’s Partha Dasgupta have gained traction on integrating national accounts (which track GDP) with the