” … the limited assurance of these public accountant’s sustainability letters provides, in certain respects, even less assurance than detailed agreed-upon procedure letters…. [T]he limited assurance letters in these sustainability reports contain very little detailed information and only reach vague, double-negative conclusions regarding the findings.”
– Michael Kraten, “Sustainability Reports and the Limitations of ‘Limited’ Assurance.” The CPA Journal (July 2019).
A recent feature for The CPA Journal (July 2019) unmasks the most politicized area of modern accounting, sustainability accounting. [1]
Following are excerpts from an essay by Michael Kraten (PhD, CPA, CSVP; professor of accounting and chair of the accounting, finance, and economics department at Houston Baptist University), “Sustainability Reports and the Limitations of ‘Limited’ Assurance.”
“Few U.S. industries sing the praises of free enterprise more loudly than the oil industry. Yet few industries rely so heavily on special governmental favors.” (Milton Friedman, 1967)
In honor of his 107th birthday, MasterResource reprints a 1967 essay by Milton Friedman, “Oil and the Middle East,” which nicely summarized the political power and cronyism of the domestic oil industry at the time. [1] Far from just historical, the animus created by pro-crony policies over a half century came home to roost in the 1970s when Northeast politicians and others imposed price controls and new taxes on the industry. That animus exists today under the hubris of climate policy.
Background
From the 1920s through the early 1970s, the political power of the domestic oil industry (primarily independent oil producers versus the integrated majors) succeeded in having the major oil states (excepting California) artificially restrict (‘prorate’) production to ‘market demand.’…
Editor note: A 2008 exchange at Rossputin.com included these comments from (then) Cato Institute senior fellow Jerry Taylor and his brother James Taylor. Their arguments continue to stand today, defying Jerry’s peculiar conversion to climate alarmism/forced energy transformation.
Jerry Taylor:
“… let me note that there are very good reasons for people (not just libertarians) to be skeptical of expert scientific consensus regarding environmental doom given the track record of that community.”
“Consensus from [the alarmist] community once told us that industrial chemicals were the cause of a modern cancer epidemic; that population growth would outpace food production and usher in a Malthusian apocalypse; that mineral scarcity would soon turn off the industrial engines of the Western world; ad infinitum.”
“Conspiracy theories are not necessary to explain the proliferation of such views – information cascades and professional biases will do nicely.”…