The environment is in crisis. Climate science and biodiversity loss indicators, for example, illustrate the extent of environmental degradation and the concerns with the sustainability of Earth, or perhaps more specifically, the ability of Earth to sustain (human) life. There is also an increasing recognition of the environmental crisis as urgent, as an emergency, yet whether we are acting sufficiently to the environmental crisis is still up for debate. These debates have become more evident in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a context within which to consider what it means to respond to a crisis and how the environment might feature in any post-COVID recovery. In this essay, we first outline and reflect on crisis, urgency and (in)action through a consideration of the environmental crisis and the COVID-19 crisis before moving to our main focus – the implications for environmental accounting. Specifically, we suggest that the construction of environmental accounting as accounting for the long-term, an attempt to contrast it with and overcome the problems with short-term conventional accounting, potentially contributes to the construction of the environment as lacking urgency and potentially enables its marginalisation. We argue that in order to make the most of accounting’s potential as a constitutive force, capable of participating in transforming preferences, decisions and behaviour in organisations and societies, environmental accounting needs to be about the short-term. We contribute to the ongoing discussions on how accounting needs to change if it is to recognise the urgent nature of the environmental crisis.

环境陷入危机。例如，气候科学和生物多样性丧失指标说明了环境退化的程度以及对地球可持续性的担忧，或者更具体地说，说明了地球维持（人类）生命的能力。人们也越来越认识到环境危机是紧迫的，是紧急情况，但我们是否对环境危机采取了足够的行动，仍有待商榷。鉴于 COVID-19 大流行，这些辩论变得更加明显，创造了一个背景，可以在其中考虑应对危机的意义，以及环境在任何 COVID-19 后的复苏中可能如何发挥作用。在这篇文章中，我们首先概述和反思危机，在转向我们的主要关注点——对环境会计的影响之前，通过考虑环境危机和 COVID-19 危机的紧迫性和（不）行动。具体而言，我们建议将环境会计构建为长期会计，试图将其与短期常规会计进行对比并克服短期常规会计的问题，这可能会导致环境建设缺乏紧迫性，并可能使其边缘化。我们认为，为了充分利用会计作为一种构成力量的潜力，能够参与改变组织和社会中的偏好、决策和行为，环境会计需要是短期的。