Title: ''In the midst of economic disaster, can the USA still care about green accounting? .... Which is more important a sustainable economy or a sustainable environment?''

Authors: Constance Crawford

Addresses: Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey, 505 Ramapo Valley Road, Mahwah, New Jersey 07430, USA

Abstract: The Obama administration has called for a heightened amount of transparency in financial reporting culminating from the recent debacle on Wall Street. Interestingly, as our economy wavers between recession and or depression, the worldwide economy is focused on gross domestic product or GDP which measures the total production and consumption of goods in our domestic economy (Curwood, 2004). How much transparency can there be reported when GDP does not include the costs of the |greening of the economy?| Many of the costs and benefits associated with environmentally sound business practices are intrinsic in value and therefore difficult to place a realistic value on (Patrut et al., 2008) US generally accepted accounting practices or GAAP has resisted including contingent environmental assets to be reported on the balance sheet or environmental cost savings on the income statement because they have no GDP value (Fuld, 2009).

Keywords: green accounting; environmental costs; value added costs; USA; United States; transparency; financial reporting; environmental assets; green economics; GDP value; gross domestic product; sustainable economy; sustainable environment; sustainability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGE.2010.037654

International Journal of Green Economics, 2010 Vol.4 No.4, pp.327 - 332

Published online: 20 Dec 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article