Jack Hollander contends in his new book that our most critical environmental problem is global poverty. In the course of examining a wide range of energy, natural resource, and environmental issues, Hollander finds that economic development and technological advances can relieve such problems as food shortages, deforestation, air pollution, and land degradation, while providing clean water, adequate energy supplies, and improved public health. The book also tackles such issues as global warming; genetically modified foods; automobile and transportation technologies; and the Endangered Species Act, which Hollander asserts never would have been passed in a poor country whose citizens struggle just to survive. Hollander asks us to look beyond the media’s doomsday rhetoric about the state of the environment and to commit much more of our resources where they will do the most good — to lifting the world’s population out of poverty.