ABSTRACT
The role for human leverage through environmental decisionmaking and action is large. Because environmental damage is outside the economic calculation of most producers and consumers, they commonly pay little attention to limiting it, even in the most developed countries. Some analysts also suggest that modern developed economies are extremely wasteful of energy and other raw materials, simultaneously depleting resource bases and contributing to environmental degradation. They propose slower economic growth rates, concentrating remaining economic growth on true improvements in the quality of life. Changes in population and economic growth and in food and energy production all potentially affect deforestation or atmospheric carbon dioxide. Food production has managed to stay ahead of population growth as a result of rapid technological progress known as the Green Revolution. The problem of growth in global atmospheric carbon dioxide is even more difficult to address than that of forest area.
