True cost accounting 'makes oil profit vanish'

This shows what a difference true cost economics could make to the way that, in this case, environmental factors could be made to bear down on bottom line decision making:

The huge profits reported by oil and gas companies would turn into losses if the social costs of their greenhouse gas emissions were taken into account.That is the conclusion of research by the New Economics Foundation (Nef). Nef found that the £10bn-plus profits just reported by Shell and BP are dwarfed by costs of emissions associated with their products.

This is part of the argument about making sure that such externalities are made internal to the financial decisions of industry. In other words, they can be made to stop freeloading off the rest of us and the environment and pay their way. If these costs were borne by the oil companies, you can bet they would be making different decisions about what kinds of energy to invest in and the rest of us would make different decisions about where we live and how we travel...

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate 'makes oil profit vanish':
Filed in: environment, oil, corporations, accounting, NEF, profits