Post: #1

I recently attended a lecture on the 'Economics of the Environment and Natural Resources', and it was pretty interesting. They echoed thoughts that most people in the industry are starting to adopt.

They showed TED talk from a few years back (2011), and compared it to what's going on right now. It's pretty neat that economic consulting firms, and accounting boards are starting to put a value on nature.

Here's the TED talk on it - https://www.ted.com/talks/pavan_sukhdev_...anguage=en

Again, this was from 2011, but things have advanced a bit since then. A lot of companies are listing concrete figures on their financial statement.

Being an investor, my inclination is to not care about the value of environmental/natural impact, the benefits are huge. People usually think of being 'environmentally safe' as a huge cash outlay, but the long-term benefits outweigh these costs.

Enjoy the video!

Post: #2

Yeah, it's known as natural capital. Most publicly listed companies include this in their integrated reports and have done for some time now.

Nature is priceless, but not valueless.

Post: #3

(01-22-2016 10:26 AM)Windom Earle Wrote:  Yeah, it's known as natural capital. Most publicly listed companies include this in their integrated reports and have done for some time now.

Nature is priceless, but not valueless.

Not nearly enough companies do it. When investors can begin to add this metric into the valuation of a company, then we'll be in a good position.

It's also only been recently. In 2014, a small percentage of companies did it (and I'm talking real small). You could take 25 random publicly listed companies on any given exchange, and none would have it listed.

Independant companies specialize in calculating the value of nature - but companies don't really (yet).