According to established integrated reporting practice and theory, companies and institutions manage six capitals to sustain. Sustainable management and reporting thus arrange its activities around the following capitals:

• Financial
• Manufacturing
• Human
• Intellectual
• Social
• Natural

In Capitals Background Paper for IR is described as »providing the environment in which other capitals sit.«

Thus, it should be straightforward that climate, together with the soil, minerals, water, air, fossil fuels, nuclear fuels, sunlight, condensed water in clouds, and many others, are logical parts of natural capital. I would also add all radiation frequencies from sound, heat, visual, and non-visible to all radio frequencies, non-ionized, and ionized radiations.

However, let me focus on climate as the environment in which other capitals sit. According to various non-scientific political organizations and Greta herself, climate becomes the only significant part of natural capital.

Due to climate change, »Our House is on fire,« the EU parliament declares. Furthermore, we all know nothing else matters when a house is on fire. There is only the fire that matters. Thus, forget all other capitals or even all other natural capitals.

I have already mentioned that this is a purely non-scientific view. Let us see if the body that governs the Integrated Reporting Initiative (IIRC) will object to the EU Parliament’s decision.* The body that propagates a holistic view of sustainable development and that has developed a considerable body of evidence in support of integrated thinking and integrated reporting. I hope they will, though I seriously doubt it.

Why?

How has climate shifted from nature to culture?

Because what we are facing at the moment is a memetic activity of shifting climate from natural to social capital. Yes. At the moment, it is politically incorrect to question the human influence on climate change. That influence is a fact comparable to gravity. If one contradicts, the dominancy of human influence on climate is like objecting to gravity. It is a non-negotiable fact.

It is at the core of sustainable management and integrated reporting to evaluate and negotiate multiple factors that affect an institution’s or a company’s prospects. We all know that lowering investment in human capital might strengthen financial capital in the short run. We know that insufficient capital in the short run might kill prospects for a future run. We know that one has to negotiate costly relations with local communities and costly investments in production capital.

Out of all possible factors, climate has now become the only non-negotiable.

Let me conclude this post with a broader perspective, for the climate is not the only factor that shifted from its original point into the social capital of political correctness. Most such shifts occur from human to social capital, notably health. Once a personal/human attribute, like health, becomes social, an individual becomes dehumanized. Not only tobacco and alcohol but even more healthcare in all dimensions become issues of the collective. The responsibility for my health does not lie in me anymore but in the anonymous community represented by the state. My skin is still in the game, and the costs are mine, but benefits are commonly distributed. Most often distributed so that few gain while the majority loses.

The climate change issue is thus part of a much more full spread of collectivization. Let us name it with its proper name: communism.

Post scriptum almost 5 years later

*This post was originally written on December 26th, 2019. It is now clear that the IIRC does not object to eco-terrorism that the EU Parliament and EU Commission induce on the EU population. While the CSRD directive still understands sustainability as a balance between all six capitals, the ESRS standards, which are 1000 standard points that companies should report on, clearly show what is really important for the EU: the climate. In the reporting practice that has already been established, it is perfectly clear that nobody reads and even less follows CSRD, which is a rather complex strategic document but jumps directly to straightforward, easy-to-understand 1000 points. Companies do not care about sustainability but only care about fulfilling stupid standards. Such practice is strongly supported by large multinational auditing companies like Deloitte and P&W, in which newly recruited youngsters who have no experience in sustainability, not even in management, chase those 1000 points of stupidity and, with that, fulfill the plan of eco-terrorists.