The Dasgupta Review (2021) is a major independent review commissioned by the UK Treasury, led by Sir Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge, on the economics of biodiversity. Its central contribution relevant here: it operationalises inclusive wealth — the shadow-price sum of produced, human, natural, and knowledge capital — as the correct welfare metric for policy evaluation, replacing GDP. Its Headline Message 2 documents the 1992–2014 divergence between rising produced capital and falling natural capital globally. The article uses the Dasgupta framework as the empirical and theoretical foundation for the Inclusive Wealth Criterion that determines when government has objective standing to act.