The following appeared in an editorial from a magazine produced by an organization dedicated to environmental protection:

"In order to effectively reduce the amount of environmental damage that industrial manufacturing plants cause, those who manage the plants must be aware of the specific amount and types of damage caused by each of their various manufacturing processes. However, few corporations have enough financial incentive to monitor this information. In order to guarantee that corporations reduce the damage caused by their plants, the federal government should require every corporation to produce detailed reports on the environmental impact of their manufacturing process, and the government should impose stiff financial penalties for failure to produce these reports."

The author proposes, in order to help an environmental protection agenda that the government requires corporations to monitor and record all the damage that the corporation causes to the environment. He further proposes stiff financial penalties for failure to produce such reports. I applaud the authors efforts but disagree with the argument.

First, knowing the amount of environmental damages a corporation causes is an important first step but would require huge initial investments in people and technology to actually measure and record such data. These costs will inevitably be transferred to the consumer and therefore will change the competitive landscape for the corporation. In the long run, price sensitive consumers will shop somewhere else, perhaps from international corporations that do not have to measure their environmental impact.

Second, producing an annual report is also a great step in the right direction. However, the report alone will not result in any changes that would lessen the organization's environmental impact. A great example would be the luxury tax for gas guzzlers, which has not impacted the sales of these vehicles even though consumers now have a measured report about the environmental impact that such a vehicle has on the environment.

Third, having a corporation create a report about its own measured damages to the environment will inevitably invite the altering of these measurements in favor of the corporation, especially in industries that have a huge impact on the environment, such as tire or automobile manufacturers.

In conclusion, the argument is weak. It fails to provide actionable steps to improve the environment altogether. Reports will not change a corporation's behavior; neither will fines for not producing them. If the author proposed that every corporation in the world has to measure its impact on the environment, with random tests from environmental or government agencies along with steep fines for fraud or failure to comply, the argument would be much more convincing. A similar proposal does actually exist in modern politics. But since the author fails to do so, the argument is not convincing.