"What kind of state is the world really in?" - by Bjorn Lømborg

<< Even children are told, I quote from Oxford University Press’ Young Oxford Books : “Humans have upset that balance, stripping the land of its green cover, choking the air, and poisoning the seas" (3). The April 2001 Global Environment Supplement from New Scientist talks about the impending “catastrophe” and how we risk consigning “humanity to the dustbin of evolutionary history.” >>
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<< There is just one problem: it does not seem to be backed up by the available evidence.
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Things are better but not necessarily good
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We are not running out of energy or natural resources (7). There will be more and more food per head of the world’s population (see Armatya Sen on that subject in this issue). Fewer and fewer people are starving. In 1900 we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 67. According to the UN we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country. >>
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<< Having reviewed carefully the trends on environmental issues, what I discovered was that our problems are often getting smaller and not bigger, and that frequently the offered solutions are grossly inefficient.
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Legend has it that when someone remarked to Voltaire “life is hard”, he retorted, “compared to what?” (9). The choice of comparison is crucial in any decision-making process. It makes sense that comparison should be with how it was before. Otherwise, how can we gauge the extent of our progress? How can we say whether we are better or worse off now than previously? This means that we should focus on trends. >>
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<< Reality

Matter-of-fact discussions of the environment seem nowadays to be very difficult, or next to impossible (in view of the reaction my book provoked). Yet it is absolutely vital to get our facts right because, with limited resources, we need to prioritize our efforts in many different fields, e.g. health, education, infrastructure and defense, as well as our environment.
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Just because figures come from international or governmental organizations does not of course mean that they are free from errors ­ some figures come from other publications which are less “official ”in nature. If you find yourself thinking “that can’t be true,” when reading this article or my book "The Skeptical Environmentalist", it is important to remember that the statistical material I present is usually identical to that used by the WWF, Greenpeace and the Worldwatch Institute. >>
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<< Of course, many people love to say that we should have a pollution-free environment. This would be bliss, but is it a reality? The point is that we, in the real world, never ask for 100 %. Similarly, we have to find a level at which there is sufficiently little pollution, such that our money, effort and time are better spent solving other problems. This calls for access to the best possible and least myth-based knowledge, the choice between reality and delusion. >>

[For the references, please see: http://www.asian-affairs.com/issue17/lomborg.html ]

And for first-hand data, check this one:
http://www.worldwatch.org/taxonomy/term/38