A high level of individual concern with environmental issues characterizes the ecological crisis of the 1970s. In spite of this increased public involvement, however, many basic problems facing humans as they interact with the environment have remained constant throughout history. For example, the sometimes conflicting concepts of scarcity, dominion of humans over nature, stewardship of the environment, and preference for nature over artifice and/or vice versa, are interwoven throughout history. These issues developed in the United States during the 1800s into concern over welfare versus individual progress, urban (industrial) versus rural (agricultural) values, and social welfare movements designed to care for less fortunate people and wild creatures. During the 1970s, major developments on the environmental scene included the professionalization of protest, the spread of negative attitudes toward industrial pollution and wasteful practices, and the widespread conviction that environmental and energy problems could be controlled through social action. Policy makers will be more successful in solving social/environmental problems if they review past solutions to environmental problems and if they employ social science research techniques to investigate areas such as social forecasting, reactive market research, setting and achieving environmental goals, and analyzing data by more sophisticated means. (DB)