ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between national wealth and environmental resources. Throughout history, humankind has sought wealth and has feared famine. A milestone in the development of thought about the relationship between resources and economic development was the publication in 1776 of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The key to national wealth therefore lay in the labour force rather than in environmental resources. The debate over Scarcity and Growth epitomizes the wider controversy that surrounds the question of whether resources are becoming scarcer or more abundant. The combination of population growth and growth in industry means that as many non-renewable resources are consumed in the first two decades of the twenty-first century as in the whole of the twentieth century. The role of population growth in relation to resource adequacy and to general environmental problems became a controversial issue and the subject of heated debate.
