What Do Americans Wrongly Believe about Environment, Resources, and Population?

Until the 18th century there was slow growth in population, almost no increase in health or decrease in mortality, slow growth in the availability of natural resources (but not increased scarcity), increase in wealth for a few, and mixed impacts on the environment. Since then there has been rapid growth in population because of spectacular decreases in the death rate, rapid growth in resources, widespread increases in wealth, and an unprecedentedly clean and beautiful living environment in the richer capitalistic countries along with a degraded environment in the poor and socialist countries.