ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the purpose of analysing the relationship between rapid population growth and environmental quality. If this proposition - that environmental degradation is chiefly a consequence of population growth - were true, the issue under discussion here could be resolved and the operational solution identified; rapid population growth correspondingly intensifies environmental degradation, which must therefore be mitigated by reducing the rate of population growth. In an industrialized country such as the United States, data on environmental quality and the factors related to it are available for both 1950–1970 - a period of decreasing environmental quality - and a period beginning in the early 1970s, when a massive effort was made to improve environmental quality. Analysis of the earlier period of environmental degradation has led to the conclusion that the dominant causal factor was the change in the technologies of industrial and agricultural production and transportation.
