This volume is on a topic which has attracted wide public attention and concern. Minnesotans are justly proud of their state as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” and are understandably concerned that the natural beauty of their surroundings be preserved. Nature provides for a continuing dy­namic balance in species and the environment. Man is the one species hav­ing the ability to modify that balance and the intelligence to assess, if he will, the consequences of the modifications he produces. Using his capa­bilities, he has been able to adapt the environment so he can survive and live on most parts of the globe. He has so vastly increased the output of food and fiber and so exploited the mineral and energy sources of the earth as to be the most ubiquitous of creatures. He has all too often been careless regarding the ecological consequences of his activities. His own advantage has, in many cases, been achieved at the expense of the decline or extinction of other creatures and plants with which he has shared the earth. Some consequences have become so serious that he has come to realize that the future of his own species is threatened by the changes he has produced.

We have become accustomed to statements such as “90 per cent of the scientists who have ever lived are now living” or “the scientific and technical literature which will be published in the next ten years will ex­ceed that which has been previously published throughout history.” These statements are not unrelated to the problem. They symbolize the growth of scientific and technical knowledge. Accompanying that growth and, in­deed, as its consequence, has come a tremendous expansion in the techno­logical base of our economy. This expansion has come so rapidly that in­sufficient time has been available to assess the influence on our environ­ment of individual steps. To further complicate our understanding, many of the technological changes interact to produce more serious effects on

the environment than those which would be produced independently by any one change.

That we have been unthinking about man’s influence on the environ­ment is evident at every hand: the trash which litters our highways and spoils our parks; the contaminated water of our rivers and lakes, resulting from the use of fertilizers and the effects of effluents emanating at major population centers and from industrial wastes; the smog which is the curse of our cities.

This decade has been a period in which there has developed a grow­ing awareness that the environment is not an indestructible resource. We have come to realize that technological innovation can be a mixed bless­ing. Questions are being raised as to whether or not some of the apparent economies resulting from technical innovation are too costly in terms of the destruction of the environment and the quality of life. The public finds itself bewildered because there have not been adequate opportunities to become sufficiently informed so as to make appropriate judgments and to make its influence felt in developing needed legislation. It is interesting to note, in this regard, that the need for new means to inform the public and lawmaking bodies has been the subject of a study by a special panel cre­ated by the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Science and Public Policy. This report, which carries the title “Technology Processes of Assessment in Choice,” says, in part: “Selections among alternative technologies require that choices be made among competing and conflict­ing interests and values. To the extent that those choices are made and en­forced collectively rather than individually, they are essentially political in character and must therefore be the responsibility of the politically re­sponsive branches of government and of those publicly accountable bodies that are specifically entrusted with regulatory responsibilities in narrowly circumscribed areas. The making of such choices is, in principle, indis­tinguishable from the resolution of many other conflicts that beset soci­ety. . .”

The public concern is voiced through legislative bodies. The purpose of the University of Minnesota is not to take political positions. It is inte­gral, however, to the University’s educational mission to seek to provide the basis of understanding which will permit individuals to make respon­sible judgments. In this context, the University joined in sponsoring the symposium “Nuclear Power and the Public.” We hope that this volume will bring to readers a better understanding of the issues involved and the consequences of alternative courses of action.

William G. Shepherd

Vice President, University of Minnesota