【正文】 urthermore, firms are being more interested in developing and improving their own environmental accounting strategies and systems (Schmidheiny 1992). Arguably, a key difference between successful and unsuccessful firms of the future will be how quickly and effectively they respond to this new challenge. Because environmental strategies and systems are being so important in the petitive marketplace, sensitizing our students to environmental issues in the accounting curriculum provides a good opportunity to meet that challenge. Critics (and cynics) view the term environmental accounting as an oxymoron. However, a more appropriate characterization is that the term is a juxtaposition of two, once unrelated, disciplines. Still, a clear definition is somewhat elusive. In our view, environmental accounting is not accounting for the environment, or a course in how to value natural assets like oldgrowth timber or the spotted owl. It is not a course in how to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement. Further, it is important to differentiate this new concept from the classical concept of Natural Resource Accounting and its macroeconomic perspective. At a basic level. Environmental Accounting is a course (or subject) that investigates how environmental issues affect traditional accounting subdisciplines. Thus, in some grander sense, it is a new and extremely powerful tool for the myriad of firms addressing measurement and valuation problems in the environmental area. Some may fear that characterizing the environment with numbers or incorporating environmental impact in the bottom line would coopt ethical and moral 4 imperatives. However, through environmental accounting, an attempt is made to provide better input into the decision making process about environmental impacts. For example, in a capital budgeting context incorporating environmental issues may change the focus of decision making. When the additional costs of remediating a polluted site following operation of dirty equipment are included in analysis of the cost of such equipment, decision makers may shift toward more environmentally friendly technologies. Use of environmental accounting techniques can thereby help firms move toward a preventative rather than curative approach to environmental problems. The remainder of the paper explores environmental issues within the accounting subdisciplines and investigates some of the synergies among them that are facilitated through the study of environmental accounting. FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING Inclusion of environmental issues can enhance classroom discussion of basic Financial Accounting issues such as definition and measurement of assets and liabilities. In particular, three generic areas can be explored within an environmental context: (1) capitalization versus expensing of costs。s remendations. In this paper, we provide examples of topics that can be used to incorporate environmental accounting issues into existing accounting classes. Specifically, we discuss how environmental issues can be incorporated into existing courses covering financial accounting, managerial accounting, information systems, auditing or tax. Examples are included that illustrate environmental issues in each of these areas. Although each subdiscipline is addressed separately, we also consider interactions among the areas. We further discuss some advantages of creating a standalone Environmental Accounting elective. Finally, the appendix presents selected environmental accounting issues that arise in many of the available cases. These examples are included to illustrate how environmental accounting facilitates discussion of fundamental accounting issues while highlighting the integrative nature of the accounting function. BACKGROUND In the academic accounting literature of the 1970s, environmental accounting was considered part of the more general area of social accounting (., Belkaoui 3 1976。1 本科畢業(yè)論文（設(shè)計） 外 文 翻 譯 外文題目 Accounting Through GreenColored Glasses 外文出處 Issues in Accounting Education,1997:P129140