This book helps readers avoid becoming overwhelmed with environmental and resource issues. It gives understanding, not motivation, and should “slow the world down,” not increase anxiety. The book is about resources viewed in the context of their environment and people. Resources are discussed in five categories: water, food, energy, minerals, and forests. Three categories of the environment are discussed: climate, landforms, and biodiversity. The book addresses an overarching socio-environmental system, not artificially separating people from the environment. Resources, the environment, and people are viewed as dynamic systems and reflect recent understandings of sustainability. The book is optimistic, standing midway between environmental ruin and technological heaven. Depletion and misuse present serious challenges, but the world currently has sufficient resources although unevenly distributed. Environmental factors, resources, and human societies always change, but at different spatial and temporal scales, in different ways, and with different degrees of abruptness. The book uses thirty-two global regions and maps and charts to show many distributions.