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[PDF] False Profits: how Australia's finance sector undervalues the environment and what we can do about it
This Report is about the financial decision-making processes that lead to false profits, and how we can reform them. By drawing lessons from ten successful innovations in the finance sector, and supplementing them with a set of public policy reforms to address structural defects in the financial system, this report describes a possible pathway towards a sustainable finance sector in Australia. By false profits, we mean financial returns earned by imposing unsustainable burdens on the natural environment. These narrow financial returns are illusory; they can be regarded as “profits” only if one disregards their collateral environmental and financial costs, and the long-term erosion of environmental health and the societies and economies that depend on it. [refers to ANZ, Westpac, NAB, CBA, Citigroup, ABN AMRO, JP Morgan Chase, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Societe Generale, BOS/ Bank West, WestLB, Royal Bank of Scotland, CSFB, Mizuho, Rabobank, Bank of America, Credit Agricole, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (part of Mitsubishi UFJ), Sumitomo Mitsui, Toronto-Dominion, UBS Warburg]