When we check the Internet, we find some 120,000 mentions of “mandatory carbon reporting,” but only about 3,000 results in the past year. More incredibly, we find only about 400 mentions in the past month, even though this mandatory reporting requirement has just been put into effect in the UK.

The media tendency is obvious: These moves to increase carbon reporting are not being reported. They are supposed to be implemented, but just not called attention to. We can’t find articles in the mainstream press about it.

Yet the increased reporting is surely laying the groundwork for additional legislation and regulation as well. Demonizing “carbon” is key to additional governmental control of people’s lives, including energy consumption for purposes travel and even nutrition. It is the final element in the erection of the surveillance state – a justification for manipulating the very fabric of the individual’s behavior.

Here’s more:

Without much fanfare a potentially transformative piece of legislation has come into force this month. New regulations are being introduced that will make the directors of some of the world’s largest companies legally responsible to report on more than just financial performance and business strategy.

They will now have to go into greater detail about how the way they do business impacts the wider world. From October 2013 all UK-based companies listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange will have to annually report on the impact of their business on the environment, the gender of their employees at different levels of seniority, and social and human rights issues.

Perhaps most significantly, following sustained campaigning from the CBI and the business world, these new regulations will require companies to report on their greenhouse gas emissions globally. The UK is the first country in the world to introduce mandatory carbon reporting.

Although the current regulations will only apply to over 1,100 listed companies there are plans in place to consider extending it in 2016 to all large companies. That could significantly increase the impact of the regulations, involving as many as 24,000 businesses. This will mean that from later this year boardrooms and shareholders will have to start paying a lot more attention to carbon footprints.