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The Club of Rome said that if we didn't freeze economic activity at 1975 levels, and let the government take control of all resources and all economic activity, then all sorts of terrible things would happen. We ignored their advice. In reality, the world's GNP has more than doubled since 1975, and none of those bad prediciotns came true. In fact, it is precisely because of economic growth that we were able to invent the technololgy that made things better.
Wealth and economic growth and private property rights are the best ways to have a healthy environment. Rich countries have much better environments than poor countries. Eastern Europe, having gone many decades without any private propoerty rights, became the worst polluted area that the world has ever had.
Here's a great article about the many failed predictions of many different environmentalists and environmental organizations from the past. All of them claimed that capitalism and economic growth would make the environment worse. None of their doomsayer predictions came true:
http://reason.com/0005/fe.rb.earth.shtml
The best way to have a healthy environment is through strong protections of private property rights, free market pricing, and economic growth. The environmental movement is against these things. Environmentalists tend to prefer government ownership of resources, government control of resources, government control of the economy, government limits on production, and wage and price controls. These things gave Eastern Europe the worst pollution that any area of the world has ever had.
Here's my recent essay debunking the myth of so-called "overpopulation":
http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/slackers/27.html
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