How will the world feed and care for the 10 billion people who are likely to be alive within a couple of generations? In this major re-evaluation of global environmental questions, Richard D. North provides a controversial answer: mankind should be able to cope rather well. He argues that the enlightenment ideal of progress is still possible, and that we can nurture and value all human life whilst taking care of the natural world.

North offers a skilful examination of the prospects for food, energy and materials provision for the human race, both present and future. In a series of case studies he reinterprets the major contemporary environmental issues, such as feeding the growing global population, energy production, global warming, pollution, the protection of biodiversity and green consumerism.

The Braer disaster, Camelford, the chlorine industry, Greenpeace, the American rangelands and spotted owl controversies, and rainforest deforestation are among the issues and incidents which come under his critical gaze. Hundreds of wide-ranging references root the book's arguments in fact, not just in theory.

1. The message is radical, fresh and ultimately optimistic: an antidote to what has become the pessimistic Green orthodoxy. Richard D. North draws on many years of broadsheet environmental journalism to rekindle the environment and development debate.