Credit crunch mustn’t stifle climate change action

The world’s financial and climate crises have a common cause – and our leaders cannot successfully put capitalism back together without at the same time fixing the environment.

So argued an elite group of scientists and parliamentarians, meeting in London last week. The meeting marked the revival of the Club of Rome, the think tank that almost 30 years ago gave the world the phrase “limits to growth”, and then rather disappeared from view as the limits receded on a wave of free-market capitalism.

Now the club is back, in our hour of need.

…The links between finance and climate are not always obvious, because of the way the economy is accounted. Nature, our most fundamental capital asset, does not appear on the balance sheet. So nor does its depreciation, said Ashok Khosla, co-president of the Club of Rome.

The world needs a new accounting system: “one that measures rainforest loss as asset depletion rather than, as now, simply as income,” Khosla said.

New Scientist