Editors' Summary: Modern environmental law in the United States is the product of public opinion. Until relatively recently, the public viewed America as a storehouse of virtually unlimited natural resources, and paid scant attention to the environmental consequences of industrial development. Beginning in the 1960s, however, that attitude changed. With dramatic events in the news focusing attention on dangers to human health and the environment, the public became more sensitive to environmental concerns, resulting in the enactment of all of the principal federal statutes designed to protect the environment.

The author discusses this shift in public opinion and the role that public interest groups and political parties have had in it. She begins with data compiled from public opinion polls and describes the current public attitude. She discusses some of the ways that this attitude has affected the political arena and consumer practices. She then discusses the different types of public interest groups, analyzing the ways in which representative groups have influenced environmental law and environmental protection. Finally, she examines the role of political parties and the interaction of this potent force with public opinion. She concludes that these three forces — public opinion, public interest groups, and political parties — which have done so much to write modern environmental law, will continue to do so in the future.