The accountant will have a central role in saving the planet . . . really? A reflection on ‘green accounting and green eyeshades twenty years later’ Craig Deegan School of Accounting, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia 1. Introduction The editor of Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA), Dean Neu, recently sent me a paper by Daniel Thornton entitled ‘‘Green Accounting and Green Eyeshades Twenty Years Later’’ (Thornton, 2013) which is published in this edition of CPA and which represents a reflection on a paper that was published in CA Magazine some 20 years ago, and which attracted much interest from practitioners at the time. I was kindly asked, as were a number of other people (Cho & Patten, 2013; Gray, 2013; Spence et al., 2013), to provide a critical commentary on the paper, with the intention that the commentaries try to bridge the traditional and alternative views on the possibilities and limitations of environmental accounting. I was happy to contribute as the paper raises a number of thought provoking issues. However, at the outset I should stress that I do not really consider incorporating a few new ‘debits and credits’ within a traditional financial accounting framework to constitute ‘environmental accounting’ or ‘green accounting’ (both terms of which can potentially be seen as oxymorons). Indeed, as I will show, I think financial reporting, as codified in conceptual frameworks and accounting standards, has too many conventions that effectively act to eliminate its ability to provide any form of meaningful contribution to addressing social and environmental performance concerns associated with corporate conduct. That is not to say that financial accounting Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (2013) 448–458 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 30 January 2013 Accepted 24 April 2013 Available online 27 May 2013 Mots cle ´s: Environnemental Social De ´ veloppement durable Palabras clave: Ambiental Social Sostenibilidad Keywords: Environmental Social Sustainability A B S T R A C T There is widespread but not universal acceptance that organisations should provide ‘accounts’ of not only their financial performance, but also of their social and environmental performance. There have also been various suggestions across time that traditional financial reporting frameworks, albeit with some modification, have relevance to calls for greater corporate accountability. This paper seeks to dismiss such suggestions. For the accounting profession to be able to meaningfully contribute to extending accountability beyond investors, lenders, and creditors (and it undoubtedly serves these interests well) it will need to abandon many core accounting conventions and principles – something that is deemed unlikely to occur – at least in the readers’ lifetime. This paper also highlights the apparent absurdity of using market-based mechanisms (such as cap- and-trade systems for pollutants) to solve social and environmental problems that were effectively caused by ‘the market’. Having questioned the role of the accounting profession in contributing to broad-based corporate accountability, the paper concludes by questioning the role of accounting and business educators in instilling some form of personal social responsibility in the minds of students. ß 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. E-mail address: Craig.Deegan@rmit.edu.au. Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Critical Perspectives on Accounting jo u rn al ho m epag e: ww w.els evier.c o m/lo cat e/cp a 1045-2354/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2013.04.004