Businesses often privatize profits and publicize costs, as they do not pay directly for environmental externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions, water use, land use consumption, air pollution, land and water pollution.
This document elaborated for the TEEB, affirm that the total unpriced natural capital consumed by the more than 1,000 “global primary production and primary processing region-sectors” amounts to $7.3 trillion a year — 13 percent of 2009 global GDP.
Other most important outcomes are: greenhouse gases from coal burning are the biggest environmental cost and of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. This means that these businesses are profitable because they are able to charge the environmental externalities to the public.
