Stern Review
In contrast to those who argued that the Stern Review was too pessimistic or 'alarmist', others argued that it did not go far enough. John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York in "the Ecological Rift" (2010) give considerable attention to the Stern Review, noting that the targets of 550 ppm imply a global temperature increase of at least 3 °C "well beyond what climate science consider dangerous, and which would bring the earth's average global temperature to a height last seen in the middle Pliocene around 3 million years ago" (p. 154). They posit that the basis for such high targets is 'economics, pure and simple' (p. 155), that is, stronger emissions cuts were seen by the Stern Review authors as "prohibitive, destabilizing capitalism itself" (p. 155). "All of this signals that any reduction in CO2 equivalent emissions beyond around 1 percent per year would make it virtually impossible to maintain strong economic growth—the bottom line of the capitalism economy. Consequently, in order to keep the treadmill of accumulation going the world needs to risk environmental Armageddon" (p. 156).