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COWBOY or spaceman? A dilemma for a children’s party, perhaps. But also a question for economists, argued Kenneth Boulding, a British economist, in an essay published in 1966. 西部牛仔或太空飞人？对于儿童排队上或许是个两难。

但也是对于经济学家的一个问题，kenneth 认为，一位经济学家（英国），在1966年出版的一个杂文中写到。

 We have run our economies, he warned, like cowboys on the open prairie: taking and using the world’s resources, confident that more lies over the horizon. 我们已经运营了我们自己的经济，他警告说，像在开阔的大草原的西部牛仔：使用和获取世界的资源，相信视野之外还有更多的栖息地。

But the Earth is less a prairie than a spaceship—a closed system, alone in space, carrying finite supplies.

但是地球与宇宙飞船相比更不是个大草原－－一个封闭的系统，只在空间中，承载有限的供给。

 We need, said Boulding, an economics that takes seriously the idea of environmental limits. In the half century since his essay, a new movement has responded to his challenge.

我们需要一个经济学认真地视环境的限制。自从他的杂文以来的半个世纪，一场新运动已经回应了他的挑战。

 "Ecological economists", as they call themselves, do not want to fiddle at the margins of economics, but to revolutionise its aims and assumptions. What do they say—and will their ideas achieve lift-off［火箭等）离地升空，垂直发射］?“生态经济学家，”正如他们称自己的，确实不想瞎搞在经济学的边际方面。他们确实说了什么－－将使得他们的想法获得离地升空。

To its practitioners, ecological economics is neither ecology nor economics, but a fusion of both. Their starting point is to recognise that the human economy is part of the natural world. 对于实践者们，生态经济学既不是生态也不是经济学，但是是两者的结合。他们的开始点是去识别人类经济是自然界的部分。

Our environment, they note, is both a source of resources and a sink for wastes. But it is ignored in conventional textbooks, where neat diagrams trace the flows between firms, households and the government as though nature did not exist. That is a mistake, say ecological economists. 我们的环境，他们指出，既是自然资源又是废物池。但是在传统的教科书中被忽略，整齐的图标追踪在公司间的、家户间和政府间的流动，虽然自然确实不存在。那是个错误，环保经济学家说。

The "natural capital" of the Earth provides important services, from water supply to pollination: in a landmark paper from 1997, researchers valued the annual supply of such "ecosystem services" at $33 trillion, or 1.8 times global GDP at the time.

地球提供重要服务的“天然资本‘，从水的供给到授粉：从1997年的一个里程碑的论文中，研究人员们估计如此环保系统的年供给在330亿美元，或者在这个时候是全球国民生产总值的1.8倍。

There are two ways our economies can grow, ecological economists point out: through technological change, or through more intensive use of resources. Only the former, they say, is worth having. 有两个方式我们的经济能够增长，环保经济学家指出：通过技术改变，或者通过更加强烈的自愿的使用。仅仅前者，他们说，是值得拥有的。

They are suspicious of GDP, a crude measure which does not take account of resource depletion, unpaid work, and countless other factors. In its place they advocate more holistic approaches, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a composite index that includes things like the cost of pollution, deforestation and car accidents.

他们怀疑国民生产总值，一个粗略的测量却不考虑资源衰竭，不付钱的工作，和数不尽的其他因素。取而代之，他们鼓吹更加全盘的方法，如真实的进步指标，一个综合指数包含如污染成本，森林砍伐和汽车事故。

While GDP has kept growing, global GPI per person peaked in 1978: by destroying our environment we are making ourselves poorer, not richer. The solution, says Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist and eco-guru, is a "steady-state" economy, where the use of materials and energy is held constant.而gdp一直保持增长，全球gpi 每人均在1978年登峰造极：通过损坏我们的环境我们使得我们自己更加贫穷，不是更加富有。解决方案，达理说，一个前世行经济学家和环保大师，是个“稳定状态”经济，材料的使用和能源的使用是个常量。

Mainstream economists are unimpressed. The GPI, they point out, is a subjective measure. And talk of limits to growth has had a bad press since the days of Thomas Malthus, a gloomy 18th century cleric who predicted, wrongly, that overpopulation would lead to famine (similar warnings in the 1970s by the Club of Rome, a think tank, proved equally misguided). 主流经济学家是印象不深刻的，真实进步指数，他们指出，是个主观的测量。谈论到限制增长一直有个不好的压力自从马尔萨斯时代，18世纪阴郁的传教士预测，错误地，认为过多的人口将导致饥荒（在20世纪70年代由罗马俱乐部警告的，一个智库证明平等地被误导了）。

Human ingenuity finds solutions to some of the most vexing problems. But ecological economists warn against complacency. In 2009 a paper in Nature, a scientific journal, argued that human activity is already overstepping safe planetary b已经oundaries on issues such as biodiversity and climate change. 人类的读创新找到对于最困扰的问题的一些解决方案。但是环保经济学家警告自满。在2009年一篇论文在nature中，一个科学杂志，认为人类活动逾越安全的行星。

 That suggests that ecological economists are at least asking some important questions, even if their answers turn out to be wrong. It may be no bad thing if economics became a little more Neil Armstrong, and a little less Jesse James.那建议生态经济学家们至少是询问一些重要的问题，即使他们的答案证明是错误的。或许不是件坏事如果经济学变得有些更加像尼尔·阿姆斯特朗（第一个离开地球踏上月球的人），有些更不像杰西·詹姆斯