Notes

1. . For a helpful discussion of some of the implications of the laws of thermodynamics, see R. B.Lindsay, “The Larger Cybernetics,” Zygon  6 (1971): 126–34. The futures of the species, the culture, and individuals now living can be analyzed separately even though they are mutually interdependent at any specific moment of time. This is so because the human species probably will survive beyond the point where remnants of a disintegrated American culture as we presently know it are no longer readily recognizable to surviving humans. It is also possible because both the human species and American culture can endure beyond the life span of any given individual. Moreover, some Americans will survive as individuals beyond that time when American culture has been reorganized drastically. Such was the case for the survivors of the collapse of the Roman Empire and, more recently, the fall of the German Third Reich.
2. . The term “ecovolution” combines the concerns of evolutionists and ecologists and is defined as the simultaneous and mutually interdependent evolution of the human species (in both biological and cultural contexts), nonhuman species, and the physical environment–with a focus on the evolution of the relationships among them.
3. . The term “degrees of freedom” is used here in the sense used by statisticians. When information is known or choices are made about some categories in a statistical problem, the remaining categories become determined.
4. . This is illustrated by the proposal of Senator Mike Gravel (D.‐Alaska) for a Nuclear Power Reappraisal Act of 1975.
5. . VanRensselaerPotter, “Biocybernetics and Survival,” Zygon  5 (1970): 245.
6. . See. Ralph Wendel Burhoe's discussion of the “culturetype” in his “Natural Selection and God,” Zygon  7 (1972): 43–45.
7. . For a brief discussion of one example of a “first priority,” see the final paragraph in the subsection “Sources of Value Change in Present‐Day America” below.
8. . These nuclei were first identified to me by Karl E. Peters.
9. . The two prongs of value change are in accord with Anthony F. C. Wallace's more detailed description of revitalization movements and the thought of some that we are currently in the middle of such major cultural change. See his Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 157–63, and Solomon H. Katz's “The Dehumanization and Rehumanization of Science and Society” Zygon 9 (1974): 130–34.
10. . For a discussion of the need for even greater visibility of environmental monitoring indices, see my “When the Earth Dies, Where Do We Bury It?‘Florida Naturalist 49 (1976): 20–24.
11. . The regional‐planning‐council concept is becoming fairly well established in several states, most notably Florida and California. See California Land‐Use Task Force, The California Land: Planning for People (Los Altos, Calif.: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1975).
12. . For a comprehensive historical analysis of the role of the image of the future in past cultures and the implications of this for contemporary civilization, see Fred Polak, The Image of the Future, trans, and abr. Elise Boulding (San Francisco: Elsevier/Jossey‐Bass, Inc., 1973).
13. . This is not the same as saying that man hopes to become God–which, according to traditional Christian thought, is the essence of sin. Rather, it is the fulfillment of the Gen. 1 charge to have dominion over the earth.
14. . For an excellent and comprehensive review of the history and nature of the environmental movement in the United States, see David L.Sills, “The Environmental Movement and Its Critics,” Human Ecology  3, no. 1 (1975): 1–41.
15. . Polak, p. 302.
16. . Robert L. Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974).
17. . For some suggestions regarding how this may be done in educational programs, see my and Thane Maynard's “When the Earth Dies, Where Do We Bury It? Or Applying Environmental Education Programs to Local Environmental Movements,” in Environmental Educational, ed. Robert Manlett (ERIC/SMEAC, Ohio State University, 1976).