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1 Wealth, health and thecycle of progressIndur Goklany“If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded,more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable todisruption than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involvingpopulation, resources, and environment are clearly visible ahead.Despite greater material output, the world’s people will be poorer inmany ways than they are today.”Global 2000 Report to the PresidentIntroductionWith this Neo-Malthusian vision of the future, the Global 2000 Reportto the President (Wrigley & Schofield, 1981) began a chilling descriptionof the problems that lay ahead for the world unless radicalchanges were made. Fifteen years later, Julian Simon (Simon, 1995)quoted these words in his introduction to the monumental collectionof essays, The State of Humanity. The point of that book, whichSimon also edited, was to determine whether trends in human wellbeingand environmental quality were in accord with a Neo-Malthusianworld view.The State of Humanity, in fifty-eight chapters by more than fiftyscholars, documented the tremendous strides in human well-beingover the centuries, as well as trends in natural resource use andenvironmental quality. Based on these discussions, Simon wrote:“Our species is better off in just about every measurable materialway” (Simon, 1995).