Come hear the story of how modern environmental law first emerged in the United States, why it has since evolved the way that it has during the past fifty years, and what challenges environmental law presently faces. The talk will more particularly focus on how our nation’s effort to fashion pollution control and natural resource management laws is challenged by the nature of pollution itself, the complexities of our ecosystem, the nation’s varied processes for lawmaking, and the ways those processes relate to cultural norms. Many of these challenges relate to the varied, complex, and uncertain spatial and temporal dimensions of pollution, factors that resist simple redress.