When Adam Smith says men have the instinct to better their lives, which comes from the womb and never leaves them till they go to the grave, I believe all economists and politicians would think that not even the mighty should stand in the way when a man wants to fulfill his desires.

Point noted.

In fact, I can see that in terms of the amount of goods and services available for enjoyment, our lives are far better than our pre-historic ancestors.

Indeed, it is getting better and better.

Take the life of my grandpa and compare it to my daughter.

I remember as a kid I used to look at a portrait of my grandfather. The photograph, which was in black and white about the size of 8 by 12 inches, was hung in the living room of a small apartment owned by my father.

My grandpa passed away in 1975.

Since then, I do not know what happened to the picture. But I never forget his look because my grandpapa would “stare” at me whenever I looked at him in the picture.

And when I first started writing this book in 1995, my daughter was four and she had the same number of picture albums as I had at that point in time.

Today, at eighteen she has a digital camera, a cell-phone that comes with a camera and a laptop that allow her to take as many pictures as she likes every day and share them with people from all over the world by posting them on the website (my poor grandpapa had only a few pictures taken in his life of 80 years).

While my grandpa never left this island named Singapore ever since he migrated from China, my daughter has been to the Movie World Gold Coast in Australia twice, and she also has been to Disneyland in Hong Kong, Tokyo and California.

Apparently, if the amount of goods and services available for us to enjoy today is much more than our great grandparents, then the materialistic life of our great grandchildren should be better than ours, right?

But do you see the “end” of this extrapolated trend?

Or you think men can keep on bettering their lives without harming the environment?

In the last chapter of this book, I just have one point to cover: Between men and nature there is a born loser.

Who is the one?

I know the answer is obvious, but I can’t just end the book right here.

Can I?

So, let me find you the “hard evidence.”

...