Economic growth and a healthy environment are two things that virtually everybody would love to have. Both provide great utility to the recipients, in this case everybody. Unfortunately, there seems to be an intrinsic tradeoff between economic activity and environmental preservation. Industry and production use resources that deplete our environment and emit by-products that harm the environment. However this production also leads to economic growth that in turn leads to more available income for everybody. Every government in the world has adopted some sort of balance between environmental protection and economic activity. Free trade versus the environment has become a hot issue lately, especially in the face of our ever-globalizing world. Free trade will certainly lead to increased world income, but the environmental consequences may also be dire — so dire as to outweigh the gains from income. This paper explains the impacts of free trade on the environment, the environmentalist argument, the pros of free trade, and review some recent empirical research measuring the impacts of free trade on the environment.