The index of environmental indicators for Canada, the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and South Korea shows that fears about increasing environmental degradation in these countries are unfounded.

Environmental quality is getting better, not worse. While it is impossible to determine the exact magnitude of the improvement in the environment due to the difficulty in determining how overall environmental quality should be measured as well as the lack of data for some important categories, the direction of the change in quality is clear.

While there are still some serious environmental problems that need to be addressed, overall environmental quality continues to improve.