In one of the most insightful articles I have ever read, Pavan Sukhdev, formerly a UN economist, describes the reforms needed to have large corporations contribute to warding off our impending environmental disaster. Pointing out that corporations extract approximately $2 trillion in ecosystem services annually, Sukhdev suggests four rather revolutionary approaches to mitigating these immense negative impacts. This includes measuring and minimizing ecosystem costs, building human and social capital, reducing speculative over-leveraging in business transactions, and increased taxation of resource use.
Clearly the ultra free market globalized economy that has been the model for that last several decades is on a collision course with the ability of nature to sustain it. We need to start seriously thinking about radically different ways to organize the world economy. The article by Sukhdev is an important start.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/486027a.html
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