[1] The proposition that there is a crisis in our environment is all wrong on the scientific facts. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency makes clear that our air and water have been getting cleaner rather than dirtier in the past few decades. 

[2] Every agricultural economist knows that the world has been eating better on average since World War II. Every resource economist knows that natural resources have been becoming more available rather than more scarce, as shown by their falling prices over the past decades and centuries. 

[3] Every demographer knows that the death rate has been falling all over the world. Life expectancy has almost tripled in the rich countries over the past couple of hundred years, and almost doubled in just the past 50 years or so in the poor countries. 

[4] It is also clear now that population growth does not hinder economic development. In the 1980s, there was a complete reversal in the consensus of thinking of population economists about this: There is no negative connection between population growth and economic development; that is, no statistical negative correlation. 

[5] So here's my central assertion: Almost every trend in material human welfare points in a positive direction, as long as we look at the matter over a reasonably long period of time. 

[6] Would I bet on it? Yes, I'll bet on it. I'll bet a week's or a month's pay with any of the prominent doomsdayers, and what I win goes to pay for more research. I'll bet that just about any trend pertaining to material human welfare will improve, rather than get worse. You pick the comparison-be it life expectancy, the availability of resources, telephones per person, you pick it-you pick the country and place, you pick the year in the future (starting 10 years from now), and I'll bet that that measure will show improvement relative to now rather than deterioration. 

[7] This is the theory of how these benign trends can come about: There come to be more people or increased income, or both. More people and increased income lead to pressure on resources. This leads to either higher prices or expected higher prices. That's where the Malthusian theory stops, right
there. 

[9] But the process doesn't end right there. What happens is that these higher prices represent opportunity to business people, who can make money by fulfilling the need. The higher prices also represent opportunity to scientists, who say, "Here's a chance for me to make a great discovery, win the Nobel Prize." The astonishing aspect of the process is that we wind up better off than if the problem had never arisen in the first place. This process of adjustment is the theory that I urge on you. 

[10] Let's look specifically at pollution, such as the smoke level in London. Smoke level has been the most important pollutant in the air for hundreds of years. This is the dirty black stuff that gets in your lungs and kills you in London or in Pennsylvania. Smoke level in London affects the number of hours of sunshine. In Kew, which is just outside of London, the sunshine hours in winter time have gone up a bit but stayed much the same. In the 1920s and 1930s, the sunshine hours in London were much below Kew, just a few miles away, but have risen since the 1940s, so that the amount of sunshine in London is almost as many hours per day as in Kew. That's because of the diminishing smoke levels in London. This graphically demonstrates the decline of air pollution in England. 

[11] I'm sure someone will say, well, but this is because of regulations. But if you look at where the regulations began in England and the effect they had upon the change-the diminution of pollution-it is effectively none.