激进的斯特恩报告表明，低碳未来也符合良好经济学。但似乎资本主义需要一次提醒：拯救我们唯一拥有的星球，符合良好的经济学。毕竟，在一颗死掉的星球上无利可图。现在可能涉及成本，但为了保护我们的子孙免于必然的毁灭，这些成本是值得付出的。
The radical Stern report showed that a low-carbon future is also good economics. But it seems that capitalism needs a reminder Saving the only planet we have makes good economic sense. There is, after all, no money to be made on a dead Earth. There may be costs involved now, but they are worth paying to protect our children from certain destruction.
这些观点现在似乎不言而喻。但二十年前，主流经济学家持有截然不同的看法。他们曾证明，气候危机将只是一次微小的经济波动，不断增长的经济体可以轻松吸收，因此不值得花钱应对。在他们的账目中，冰盖和冰川在功能上毫无价值，树木只有在被砍伐时才增加GDP，宜居的气候甚至不值得在电子表格上占据一行。
These propositions seem self-evident now. But two decades ago, mainstream economists had very different ideas. They had proved that the climate crisis would be a mere economic blip, easily absorbed by growing economies and therefore not worth spending money on. In their accounting, they considered ice caps and glaciers functionally worthless, that trees only add to GDP when they are cut down, and that a livable climate shouldn’t even merit a line on a spreadsheet.