In this work, Joseph DiMento reviews the record of international efforts to use law to make our planet more livable. He looks at how law has been used successfully - often in highly innovative ways - to influence the environmental actions of governments, multinational corporations and individuals. He also assesses the failures of international law in order to make policy recommendations that could increase the effectiveness of environmental law. He concludes that a "supranational model" is not the preferred way to influence the actions of sovereign nations and that international environmental law has been and must continue to be a laboratory to test approaches to lawmaking and implementation for the global community.