https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/22/carbon-adjusted-earnings-per-share/

If my PR inbox is anything to go by (trust me, it is), companies, and especially stock-market listed megacorps, are scrambling to out-green each other with tales of how the planet will be taking breaths of relief because of what glorious stewardship they provide for our slowly heating planet. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals are reported with great glee, but few companies tie it directly to earnings.

There’s an old truism in journalism that people can’t understand distances longer than a football field, and can’t understand numbers larger than their mortgage. PR professionals know this, and time and time again, the public is agog with the numbers. “Wow, company X put $10 million toward climate change!” means that we, collectively, get all warm and fuzzy about Company X. Few of us pause to think how Company X had that $10 million to spend, and when it turns out that it is only a fraction of the marketing budget, it often becomes clear that the “green initiatives” are marketing spend, not planet-improvement spend.