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Thursday, March 24, 2005 |
[GreenBiz]: The change from one-dimensional
financial reporting to three-dimensional 'triple bottom line' (TBL)
reporting has created new challenges... [which] will require management accountants and other financial
professionals to adapt and learn some new skills.
Here are a few questions you can
ask that will enable you to foresee if better management of economic,
environmental and social issues can make your organization more
sustainable.
- How does information flow?
- How risky is our position?
- What is our source of competitive advantage?
Good questions. The article summarizes the conclusions of Sustainability: The Role of Accountants, a report from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).
OTOH, as Thomas Johnson observes in Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, 'TODAY'S management accounting information, driven by the procedures and
cycle of the organization's financial reporting system, is too late,
too aggregated, and too distorted to be relevant for managers' planning
and control decisions.'
Big challenges ahead.
10:03:06 PM 
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Speaking of strategic choices in the face of peak oil...
[WorldChanging]: Decades
behind developed nations when it comes to supporting a car culture,
China may actually benefit from its very backwardness. All those
bicycles mean there isn't a cumbersome - and entrenched - gasoline
infrastructure to stand in the way of the next big thing. That's why
China hopes to eventually bypass the oil-based auto culture and go
right to a hydrogen economy.
9:37:16 PM
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[One more from WorldChanging]: In Herold's view, each of the world's
seven largest publicly traded oil companies will begin seeing
production declines within the next 48 months or so.... Add increased
demand for petroleum from rapidly-developing China and India to the
possibility of imminent limits on production and you have, to put it
mildly, a sticky situation.
Given the significance of petroleum in the global economy, this is Big.
This is also an enormous opportunity for countries, companies and
communities to distinguish themselves by how they address the
transition. Or not.
(Lots of 'favorite oil and energy information websites' in the comments section.)
9:30:23 PM
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[WorldChanging]: The
insulation, along with high-efficiency windows and other energy-saving
features, results in the buildings requiring only about one liter of
oil per square meter for annual heating -- 5% of the average home
requirement in Germany, and well below the nation's new efficiency
mandate of 7 liters per square meter.
The mandate is 65% reduction -- no small thing. These folks are talking 95% reduction. Keep that in mind next time someone tells you "Can't be done."
9:11:09 PM
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[AltFunction]: I think a lot of communication around sustainable development and
corporate responsibility suffers because we rely on the printed word
too much and don't use good images and diagrams enough.
 This Pattern Map
does a good job of using the inherent non-linear and graphic potential
of the web (it uses Flash, but not obtrusively) to present the triple
bottom line approach to sustainable development in a creative way.
2:51:52 PM
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John Robb is not a proponent of terrorism and guerilla warfare, but he
is an astute analyst of it. Neither the White House nor the anti-Iraq
War folks are paying him enough attention, IMHO.
Here's what he said recently about potential vulnerabilities of our current energy systems:
[Global Guerillas]:
A central theme of global guerrilla warfare is that the centralized
systems we rely upon in modern nation-states are unable to withstand
even a rudimentary low tech assault. The environmental movement
picked up on this vulnerability for their own purposes. Their
message: clean energy is more secure energy. This is
accurate. Clean energy requires decentralized production and is
by its nature more secure....
Eco-terrorism isn't new. It is, however, typically ineffective. This report [Cascadia Scorecard] points to another potential scenario. If eco-activists adopt global guerrilla tactics,
they could coerce a rapid move to clean energy alternatives.
Small but extremely effective (high ROI) attacks on the energy
corridors leading to target regions, would quickly increase the costs
of conventional energy such that clean power alternatives would become
extremely attractive. This would be dictated by a direct economic
comparison (costs) as well as indirect factors such as reliability of
delivery. This systems sabotage tax would induce a tipping point
in energy market equilibria towards green alternatives if it is
extended over a long period (longer than one season) and is of a
sufficient level. See the brief Urban Takedowns for more on how a terrorism tax can impact market equilibria.
11:37:38 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Gil Friend.
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