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444 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1979)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0444 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE We are on the edge of an environmental crisis. President Carter spoke of this problem to all Americans on 5 April when he discussed the energy crisis and the need for new energy production, energy conservation, and development technology. All of these efforts by the public and private sectors of our economy and our families are related to how we act and react to our environment. The environment and the quality of life constitute the theme of the 90th anniversary of the Academy, the 83rd annual meeting. What is the environment? What do we mean by quality? The environment is the world around us; it is everything external to our individual physiological and psychic organisms, that which is exogenous, that which we see, smell, hear, and touch beyond the genetic corporeal substance that is ourselves. Environment is defined as that which environs, the surrounding conditions, influences or forces which influence or modify. . . . In the study of human behavior, environment may be divided into the physical, or inorganic, environment, comprising such factors as climate and soil, the biological environment comprising wild plants and animals, including bacteria and other germs, and the social environment, comprising everything due to human activity, and divisable in turn into the physicosocial environment, comprising roads, and all manufactured objects, the biosocial environment, comprising domesticated plants and animals, and the psychosocial environment, consisting of human behavior, customs, laws, language, etc.' The only example used by Webster's Unabridged Dictionary is from Carlyle: It is no friendly environment, this of thine.2 Our annual meeting for 1979 was devoted to the environment and the quality of life around the world. Although our speakers had been prepared to address various and specific issues concerned with the general topic, only a limited number of issues could be covered in a short program. Many topics beyond this meeting are also part of the environmental problems. We intended to cover a few of the important ones concerned with industry, the United States, and governments abroad. The recent nuclear power plant problem on Three Mile Island near Harrisburg is an event that was beyond our purview when the Board of the Academy established this theme and program last November. That power plant accident is, of course, part of our environment and the quality of our lives. Our speakers did not present papers directly con- cerned with that event, for they prepared their papers far in advance of it. Nonetheless, members of the Academy in attendance had the right to raise questions about the effect of nuclear power plants throughout the United States and the world on our quality of life and on our environment. The Middletown-Harrisburg nuclear plant problem probably had an effect on the attendance at this meeting. Some persons were fearful to come to this region of Pennsylvania because of the potential radiation prob- lems. About this I have regret but also understanding. Fortunately, there was no reason for fear at the time of the meeting. 1. Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. and C. Merriam Co., 1959. 2. Ibid. vii

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