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The opportunity to comment on Eugene B. Skolnikoff's wide-ranging article cannot easily be resisted. Few people can resist the temptation to make their own predictions about the future. But, quite beyond the general appeal of prediction, Skolnikoff suggests so many ideas and trends to the reader of his stimulating article that the aspiring commenter can hardly fail to find topics to engage him.

It is clear that advances in science and technology, particularly technology, have wrought major changes in society. The effects of these advances have been felt directly through the development of major new artifacts such as the automobile, the telephone, and nuclear weapons. Major social effects, often of greater importance, have also resulted from the second-order consequences of this new technology: urbanization, mass culture, pollution, industrialization, etc.

Abstract: Have international courts been too conservative in handling environmental cases? The overall conclusion is obvious: progressive arguments about the environment do not normally appeal to States, and they are therefore not made in court. The very considerable progress in developing international environmental law we have witnessed in the thirty years since I started writing on the subject has not been led by courts or tribunals. Inter-State litigation is an important and useful tool in upholding the rule of law, affirming the development of a coherent body of law, and applying it to the facts, but it is not the way to answer the problems posed by those who seek better, more progressive, or more radical solutions to the world's many environmental problems. For that we must turn to governments and international institutions. Stronger political action on achieving the objectives of multilateral environmental agreements is what the world needs to tackle its growing environmental crisis, not more law-making or more litigation.