A number of basic accounting principles have been developed through common usage.

They
form the basis upon which the complete suite of accounting standards have been built. The best-
known of these principles are as follows:

 Accrual principle. This is the concept that accounting transactions should be recorded in the
accounting periods when they actually occur, rather than in the periods when there are cash
flows associated with them. This is the foundation of the accrual basis of accounting. It is
important for the construction of financial statements that show what actually happened in an
accounting period, rather than being artificially delayed or accelerated by the associated cash
flows. For example, if you ignored the accrual principle, you would record an expense only
when you paid for it, which might incorporate a lengthy delay caused by the payment terms for
the associated supplier invoice.

 Conservatism principle. This is the concept that you should record expenses and liabilities as
soon as possible, but to record revenues and assets only when you are sure that they will occur.
This introduces a conservative slant to the financial statements that may yield lower reported
profits, since revenue and asset recognition may be delayed for some time. Conversely, this
principle tends to encourage the recordation of losses earlier, rather than later. This concept can
be taken too far, where a business persistently misstates its results to be worse than is
realistically the case.

 Consistency principle. This is the concept that, once you adopt an accounting principle or
method, you should continue to use it until a demonstrably better principle or method comes
along. Not following the consistency principle means that a business could continually jump
between different accounting treatments of its transactions that makes its long-term financial
results extremely difficult to discern.

 Cost principle. This is the concept that a business should only record its assets, liabilities, and
equity investments at their original purchase costs. This principle is becoming less valid, as a
host of accounting standards are heading in the direction of adjusting assets and liabil ities to
their fair values.

 Economic entity principle. This is the concept that the transactions of a business should be kept
separate from those of its owners and other businesses. This prevents intermingling of assets
and liabilities among multiple entities, which can cause considerable difficulties when the
financial statements of a fledgling business are first audited.
 Full disclosure principle. This is the concept that you should include in or alongside the
financial statements of a business all of the information that may impact a reader's
understanding of those statements. The accounting standards have greatly amplified upon this
concept in specifying an enormous number of informational disclosures.

 Going concern principle. This is the concept that a business will remain in operation for the
foreseeable future. This means that you would be justified in deferring the recognition of some
expenses, such as depreciation, until later periods. Otherwise, you would have to recognize all
expenses at once and not defer any of them.

 Matching principle. This is the concept that, when you record revenue, you should record all
related expenses at the same time. Thus, you charge inventory to the cost of goods sold at the
same time that you record revenue from the sale of those inventory items. This is a cornerstone
of the accrual basis of accounting. The cash basis of accounting does not use the matching the
principle.

 Materiality principle. This is the concept that you should record a transaction in the accounting
records if not doing so might have altered the decision making process of someone reading the
company's financial statements. This is quite a vague concept that is difficult to quantify, which
has led some of the more picayune controllers to record even the smallest transactions.

 Monetary unit principle. This is the concept that a business should only record transactions that
can be stated in terms of a unit of currency. Thus, it is easy enough to record the purchase of a
fixed asset, since it was bought for a specific price, whereas the value of the quality control
system of a business is not recorded. This concept keeps a business from engaging i n an
excessive level of estimation in deriving the value of its assets and liabilities.

 Reliability principle. This is the concept that only those transactions that can be proven should
be recorded. For example, a supplier invoice is solid evidence that an expense has been
recorded. This concept is of prime interest to auditors, who are constantly in search of the
evidence supporting transactions.

 Revenue recognition principle. This is the concept that you should only recognize revenue when
the business has substantially completed the earnings process. So many people have skirted
around the fringes of this concept to commit reporting fraud that a variety of standard-setting
bodies have developed a massive amount of information about what constitutes proper revenue
recognition.
 Time period principle. This is the concept that a business should report the results of its
operations over a standard period of time. This may qualify as the most glaringly obvious of all
accounting principles, but is intended to create a standard set of comparable periods, which is
useful for trend analysis.

Accounting Concepts
1. Business entity concept: A business and its owner should be treated
separately as far as their financial transactions are concerned.
2. Money measurement concept: Only business transactions that can be
expressed in terms of money are recorded in accounting, though records of
other types of transactions may be kept separately.
3. Dual aspect concept: For every credit, a corresponding debit is made. The
recording of a transaction is complete only with this dual aspect.
4. Going concern concept: In accounting, a business is expected to continue
for a fairly long time and carry out its commitments and obligations. This
assumes that the business will not be forced to stop functioning and
liquidate its assets at “fire-sale” prices.
5. Cost concept: The fixed assets of a business are recorded on the basis of
their original cost in the first year of accounting. Subsequently, these
assets are recorded minus depreciation. No rise or fall in market price is
taken into account. The concept applies only to fixed assets.
6. Accounting year concept: Each business chooses a specific time period to
complete a cycle of the accounting process—for example, monthly,
quarterly, or annually—as per a fiscal or a calendar year.
7. Matching concept: This principle dictates that for every entry of revenue
recorded in a given accounting period, an equal expense entry has to be
recorded for correctly calculating profit or loss in a given period.
8. Realisation concept: According to this concept, profit is recognised only
when it is earned. An advance or fee paid is not considered a profit until
the goods or services have been delivered to the buyer
Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other air pollutants and
greenhouse gases collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation
that have bounced off the earth’s surface. Normally, this radiation would escape into
space—but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere,
trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. That's what's known as the greenhouse
effect.

In the United States, the burning of fossil fuels to make electricity is the largest source
of heat-trapping pollution, producing about two billion tons of CO2 every year. Coal-
burning power plants are by far the biggest polluters. The country’s second-largest
source of carbon pollution is the transportation sector, which generates about 1.7 billion
tons of CO2 emissions a year.

Planting billions of trees across the world is one of the biggest and cheapest ways
of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to tackle the climate crisis, according to
scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be
planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.

As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are
driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting
programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions from human activities
that remain in the atmosphere today, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-
blowing”.

The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native
tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and
equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical areas could have
100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on
average about half the area would be under tree canopy.
The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas
from their analysis. But they did include grazing land, on which the researchers
say a few trees can also benefit sheep and cattle.

Let nature heal climate and biodiversity crises, say

campaigners

Read more

“This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one of our
climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” said Prof Tom
Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who led the research. “What blows
my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is
overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions
proposed.”

Crowther emphasised that it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising
greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and
bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis
becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take
50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon.

But tree planting is “a climate change solution that doesn’t require President
Trump to immediately start believing in climate change, or scientists to come up
with technological solutions to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere”,
Crowther said. “It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible and every one
of us can get involved.” Individuals could make a tangible impact by growing
trees themselves, donating to forest restoration organisations and avoiding
irresponsible companies, he added.

Other scientists agree that carbon will need to be removed from the atmosphere
to avoid catastrophic climate impacts and have warned that technological
solutions will not work on the vast scale needed.

Jean-François Bastin, also at ETH Zürich, said action was urgently required:
“Governments must now factor [tree restoration] into their national strategies.”

Q&A
Why are trees good for the environment?
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Christiana Figueres, former UN climate chief and founder of the Global

Optimism group, said: “Finally we have an authoritative assessment of how much
land we can and should cover with trees without impinging on food production or
living areas. This is hugely important blueprint for governments and private
sector.”

René Castro, assistant-director general at the UN Food and Agriculture

Organisation, said: “We now have definitive evidence of the potential land area
for re-growing forests, where they could exist and how much carbon they could
store.”

The study, published in the journal Science, determines the potential for tree
planting but does not address how a global tree planting programme would be
paid for and delivered.

Crowther said: “The most effective projects are doing restoration for 30 US cents
a tree. That means we could restore the 1tn trees for $300bn [£240bn], though
obviously that means immense efficiency and effectiveness. But it is by far the
cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.” He said financial incentives to
land owners for tree planting are the only way he sees it happening, but he thinks
$300bn would be within reach of a coalition of billionaire philanthropists and the
public.
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to
reduce your impact on Earth

Read more

Effective tree-planting could take place across the world, Crowther said: “The
potential is literally everywhere – the entire globe. In terms of carbon capture,
you get by far your biggest bang for your buck in the tropics [where canopy cover
is 100%] but every one of us can get involved.” The world’s six biggest nations,
Russia, Canada, China, the US, Brazil and Australia, contain half the potential
restoration sites.

Tree planting initiatives already exist, including the Bonn Challenge, backed by
48 nations, aimed at restoring 350m hectares of forest by 2030. But the study
shows that many of these countries have committed to restore less than half the
area that could support new forests. “This is a new opportunity for those
countries to get it right,” said Crowther. “Personally, Brazil would be my dream
hotspot to get it right – that would be spectacular.”

The research is based on the measurement of the tree cover by hundreds of

people in 80,000 high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth. Artificial
intelligence computing then combined this data with 10 key soil, topography and
climate factors to create a global map of where trees could grow.

This showed that about two-thirds of all land – 8.7bn ha – could support forest,
and that 5.5bn ha already has trees. Of the 3.2bn ha of treeless land, 1.5bn ha is
used for growing food, leaving 1.7bn of potential forest land in areas that were
previously degraded or sparsely vegetated.
“This research is excellent,” said Joseph Poore, an environmental researcher at
the Queen’s College, University of Oxford. “It presents an ambitious but essential
vision for climate and biodiversity.” But he said many of the reforestation areas
identified are currently grazed by livestock including, for example, large parts of
Ireland.

“Without freeing up the billions of hectares we use to produce meat and milk, this
ambition is not realisable,” he said. Crowther said his work predicted just two to
three trees per field for most pasture: “Restoring trees at [low] density is not
mutually exclusive with grazing. In fact many studies suggest sheep and cattle do
better if there are a few trees in the field.”

Can planting billions of trees save the planet?

Read more

Crowther also said the potential to grow trees alongside crops such as coffee,
cocoa and berries – called agro-forestry – had not been included in the
calculation of tree restoration potential, and neither had hedgerows: “Our
estimate of 0.9bn hectares [of canopy cover] is reasonably conservative.”

However, some scientists said the estimated amount of carbon that mass tree
planting could suck from the air was too high. Prof Simon Lewis, at University
College London, said the carbon already in the land before tree planting was not
accounted for and that it takes hundreds of years to achieve maximum storage.
He pointed to a scenario from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
1.5C report of 57bn tonnes of carbon sequestered by new forests this century.
Other scientists said avoiding monoculture plantation forests and respecting local
and indigenous people were crucial to ensuring reforestation succeeds in cutting
carbon and boosting wildlife.

Earlier research by Crowther’s team calculated that there are currently

about 3tn trees in the world, which is about half the number that existed before
the rise of human civilisation. “We still have a net loss of about 10bn trees a year,”
Crowther said.

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Visit the Crowther Lab website for a tool that enables users to look at particular
places and identify the areas for restoration and which tree species are native
there.

• This article was amended on 18 October 2019 to reflect a revision made to the
original research paper, and a clarification in a letter by the authors of the
study in the journal Science, that responds to criticism of their work. They clarify
that one comparison made did not take into account that 55% of the CO2
produced by human activity is absorbed by land and oceans. The text of the first
and second paragraph of this article have been edited to reflect this and the paper
revision.

The evidence that humans are causing climate change, with drastic
consequences for life on the planet, is overwhelming, but the question
of what to do about it remains controversial. Economics, sociology, and
politics are all important factors in planning for the future.

A global conversation that began with concern over warming has now
turned to the broader term climate change, preferred by scientists to
describe the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and
climate systems. Climate change encompasses not only rising average
temperatures but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife
populations and habitats, rising seas, and a range of other impacts. All
of these changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-
trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Countries around the world acknowledged the imperative to act

on climate change with the Paris Agreement in 2015, making pledges to
reduce greenhouse gas pollution. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), which synthesizes the scientific consensus on
the issue, has set a goal of keeping warming under 2 degrees Celsius
(3.6 Fahrenheit) and pursuing an even lower warming cap of 1.5
degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

Both of those targets are in jeopardy. Major countries are already falling
behind on their pledges, according to a UN report issued at the end of
2018, and emissions levels in 2030 need to be approximately 25 to 55
percent lower than they were in 2017. Previous research suggests that
even if countries do meet their pledges to reduce emissions,
those commitments won't be enough to stave off severe warming.

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C A U S E S A N D E F F E C T S O F C L I M A T E C H A N G E What causes climate change

(also known as global warming)? And what are the effects of climate change? Learn the human impact
and consequences of climate change for the environment, and our lives.

What can be done?

Addressing climate change will require many solutions—there's no
magic bullet. Yet nearly all of these solutions exist today, and many of
them hinge on humans changing the way we behave, shifting the way
we make and consume energy. The required changes span technologies,
behaviors, and policies that encourage less waste and smarter use of our
resources. For example, improvements to energy efficiency and vehicle
fuel economy, increases in wind and solar power, biofuels from organic
waste, setting a price on carbon, and protecting forests are all potent
ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases trapping
heat on the planet.

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Scientists are also working on ways to sustainably produce hydrogen,
most of which is currently derived from natural gas, to feed zero-
emission fuel cells for transportation and electricity. Other efforts are
aimed at building better batteries to store renewable energy;
engineering a smarter electric grid; and capturing carbon dioxide from
power plants and other sources with the goal of storing it underground
or turning it into valuable products such as gasoline. Some people argue
that nuclear power—despite concerns over safety, water use, and toxic
waste—should also be part of the solution, because nuclear plants don't
contribute any direct air pollution while operating.

While halting new greenhouse gas emissions is critical, scientists have

also emphasized that we need to extract existing carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere. More fanciful ideas for cooling the planet—so-called
“geoengineering” schemes such as spraying sunlight-reflecting aerosols
into the air or blocking the sun with a giant space mirror—have
largely been dismissed because they may pose more environmental
risks than proven benefits.

PHOTOS OF GLOBAL WARMING IMPACTS

1/11

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An iceberg melts in the waters off Antarctica. Climate change has accelerated the rate of ice loss
across the continent.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

As sea levels rise, salty ocean waters encroach into Florida’s Everglades. Native plants and
animals struggle to adapt to the changing conditions.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KEITH LADZINSKI, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

The western U.S. has been locked in a drought for years. The dry, hot weather has increased the
intensity and destructiveness of forest fires.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
Bunches of oil palm fruit are harvested by hand and then trucked to a mill in mainland Malaysia,
where they are processed. Ancient forests around the tropics are being cut down to
… Read MoreP H O T O G R A P H B Y P A S C A L M A I T R E , N A T G E O I M A G E C O L L E C T I O N

In the high plains of Bolivia, a man surveys the baked remains of what was the country’s second
largest lake, Lake Poopó. Drought and management issues have caused the lake to dry up.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MAURICIO LIMA, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Climate change is impacting flora and fauna across the Arctic. Although scientists don't know
specifically what killed this individual polar bear, experts warn that many of the bears are having
trouble finding food as the sea ice they historically relied on thins and melts earlier.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CRISTINA MITTERMEIER, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Lake Urmia, in Iran, is a critical bird habitat and used to be a popular tourist destination. It is
drying up because of climate change and management issues.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NEWSHA TAVAKOLIAN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

The Scherer power plant in Juliet, Georgia, is the largest coal-fired power plant in the U.S. It
burns 34,000 tons of coal daily, pumping over 25 million tons of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere each year.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBB KENDRICK, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Ice melts on a mountain lake. Lakes around the world are freezing less and less over time, and in
a few decades, thousands of lakes around the world may lose their winter ice cover entirely.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ORSOLYA HAARBERG, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

The Amazon is losing the equivalent of nearly one million soccer fields of forest cover each
year, much of which is cut down to make way for agriculture. When forest is lost, the carbon it
sequestered ends up in the atmosphere, accelerating climate change.
PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANS LANTING, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

In Glacier National Park, forests are feeling the effects of early snowmelt and long, dry summers.
The stresses on the park's flora are exacterbated by climate change.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KEITH LADZINSKI, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

But planting trees, restoring seagrasses, and boosting the use of

agricultural cover crops could help clean up significant amounts of
carbon dioxide. Restoring forests already chopped down in Brazil, for
example, could draw about 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2 out of the air,
and a recent study published by the National Academies of Science
estimates the world’s forests and farms could store 2.5 gigatons. Those
are relatively modest numbers given historic carbon emissions of 2.2
trillion metric tons, but every contribution is needed to curtail the
world’s current trajectory.

Adapt or else
Communities around the world are already recognizing that adaptation
must also be part of the response to climate change. From flood-prone
coastal towns to regions facing increased droughts and fires, a
new wave of initiatives focuses on boosting resilience. Those include
managing or preventing land erosion, building microgrids and other
energy systems built to withstand disruptions, and designing buildings
with rising sea levels in mind.

Recent books such as Drawdown and Designing Climate Solutions have

proposed bold and comprehensive yet simple plans for reversing our
current course. The ideas vary, but the message is consistent: We
already have many of the tools needed to address climate change. Some
of the concepts are broad ones that governments and businesses must
implement, but many other ideas involve changes that anyone can
make—eating less meat, for example, or rethinking your modes of
transport.

"We have the technology today to rapidly move to a clean energy

system," write the authors of Designing Climate Solutions. "And the price
of that future, without counting environmental benefits, is about the
same as that of a carbon-intensive future."

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Solutions to global warming
To promote global warming solutions, Environment America, our network of 29 state
affiliates, and members and activists in all 50 states are running these projects and
campaigns:
Fossil Fuel Free: Even as global warming accelerates, the major oil, gas and coal
companies are sticking to business as usual. Fortunately, a growing number of investors
understand that the industry’s business model is incompatible with what scientists are
telling us we must do to slow global warming. That’s why we’re supporting the fossil
fuel divestment movement.
Tropical Forest Protection: To slow global warming, we must protect the world’s
tropical forests. We’re doing our part by urging companies to commit to stop cutting
them down—a commitment known as zero-deforestation. We are currently focusing on
the beef and soybean supply chain.
Clean Car Communities: We also need to change what we drive. We’re calling for all
new cars and trucks to be electric by 2035. We know our leaders in Washington, D.C.,
are going the wrong way on this issue, so our Clean Car Communities campaign is urging
local and state officials to point the way forward.
Regional Climate Action: We also must reduce and ultimately eliminate carbon
pollution from power plants. Especially given the absence of leadership from
Washington, D.C., the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative might be the most important
climate program you’ve never heard of.
Environmental Defense: Our Climate: The Trump administration has moved to
dismantle protections that limit global warming pollution from power plants, cars and
trucks, and other sources. We’re working to defend and strengthen these climate
protections.
0 Ways to Stop Global Warming
Want to help stop global warming? Here are 10 simple things
you can do and how much carbon dioxide you'll save doing
them.
Change a light
Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150
pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Drive less
Walk, bike, carpool or take mass transit more often. You'll save one pound of carbon
dioxide for every mile you don't drive!

Recycle more
You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your
household waste.

Check your tires

Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve your gas mileage by more than 3
percent. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere.

Use less hot water

It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use less hot water by taking shorter and cooler
showers and washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water (more than 500
pounds of carbon dioxide saved per year).

Avoid products with a lot of packaging

You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you reduce your garbage by 10
percent.

Adjust your thermostat

Moving your thermostat down just 2 degrees in winter and up 2 degrees in summer
could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Plant a tree
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.

Turn off electronic devices

Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer, when you're not
using them, will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.