Toward a different debate in environmental accounting: The cases of carbon and cost-benefit

Larry Lohmann

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2009, vol. 34, issue 3-4, pages 499-534

Abstract: Many champions of environmental accounting suggest that calculating and internalizing [`]externalities' is the solution to environmental problems. Many critics of neoliberalism counter that the spread of market-like calculations into [`]non-market' spheres, is, on the contrary, itself at the root of such problems. This article proposes setting aside this debate and instead closely examining the concrete conflicts, contradictions and resistances engendered by environmental accounting techniques and the perpetually incomplete efforts of accountants and their allies to overcome them. In particular, it explores how cost-benefit analysis and the carbon accounting techniques required by the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and other carbon trading mechanisms [`]frame' new agents, spaces, relations and objects, and what the consequences have been and are likely to be.

Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VCK ... 6243748e166a47944ea0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:34:y:2009:i:3-4:p:499-534

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Organizations and Society is edited by A. G. Hopwood

More articles in Accounting, Organizations and Society from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().