I read a couple of fascinating articles recently by Ken Pucker which addresses these questions so I invited him to come on the podcast to talk this through. Ken is the former COO of Timberland, is an Advisory Director at Berkshire Partners, and is a Senior Lecturer at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

The two articles of Ken’s that I read were:

1. The Trillion Dollar Fantasy: Linking ESG Investing with Planetary Impact and
2. Heroic Accounting

You should check them out.

This was a truly fascinating episode of the podcast and as always, I learned loads, I hope you do too.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Is-ESG-Investing-Impactful-And-Or-Profitable-A-Chat-With-Ken-Pucker-Podcast/B09GRGKBB2

By Andrew A. King & Kenneth P. Pucker Sep. 20, 2021

As concerns mount about social and environmental sustainability, an unlikely planetary hero has emerged: the accountant. A growing collection of investors, academics, and business leaders have proposed that better accounting practices can overthrow what Financier Ronald Cohen calls “the tyranny of profit” and set capitalism on a more sustainable track. This new “Impact Accounting” promises to tabulate every way that individual companies influence planetary welfare—including economic profit, employment, social equity, biodiversity, and climate—and translate all of them into a single measure of impact, represented in dollars and cents. According to Cohen and Harvard Professor George Serafeim, the resulting “impact transparency will reshape capitalism…it will redefine success, so that its measure is not just money, but the positive impact we make during our lives.” Another Harvard Professor, Rebecca Henderson, expresses the plan concisely: “Accountants hold the key to the salvation of civilization.”

Read the full article:  https://ssir.org/articles/entry/heroic_accounting

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/81365e3f-0c57-42c3-b9f4-b692170482ec/episodes/038b34c3-0ffe-4726-a158-8ca3daa4dfe7/break-some-dishes-can-accountants-save-the-planet