"This book challenges the common belief that economic growth constitutes an insurmountable threat to the environment. A wide array of empirical observations is presented to show that environmental quality tends to improve as economic activity is expanded. The book explores the reasons for this counterintuitive finding and concludes that expanding economic activity has provided increasing scope to fashion environmental conditions to human needs, that human inventiveness and flexible behavior has avoided or disarmed the environmental problems and constraints arising in the course of economic growth, and that there is no compelling reason why continued economic growth should not be compatible with improving environmental standards.".