COMMENTARY
To 'Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.' sustainability@fmi.com'
date Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 4:54 PM
subject I would love the mining industry to use TrueValueMetrics

Dear Colleagues

I am an old engineer turned economist turned accountant. I also speak the English language and am trying to reconcile the idea of mining and sustainability. I recently (2010) attended a conference at Columbia University on the subject, and could not understand why a room full of intelligent people were not bothered by this conundrum.

I believe what you and they are trying to do is to use a fashionable word to describe efforts in the mining and other extractive industries to behave in a responsible way ... which is reasonable.

However, I would like to see some major revisions to how companies in this sector do their money accounting. Because the accounting is only done from the organization perspective, it seems that extractive activities are profitable. If the accounting is done using the community ... the place ... as the reporting entity, then a very different profit performance will be reported. This is what TrueValueMetrics is designed to do.

Peter Burgess
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Peter Burgess
Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society twitter: @peterbnyc @truevaluemetric www.truevaluemetrics.org www.truevaluemetrics.com blog: http://truevaluemetrics.blogspot.com blog: http://communityanalyticsca.blogspot.com www.tr-ac-net.org (being phased out!) mobile: 212 744 6469 landline in PA 570 431 4043 email: peterbnyc@gmail.com skype: peterburgessnyc Books: Search Peter Burgess at www.lulu.com
Peter Burgess

Sustainability Report from Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.2008