“Global governance" is not new. System of international regimes regulating and encouraging industrial development across borders has been characteristic of the last three of the four industrial eras. The outlines of a new industrial era are already clear, but many of the institutions of global governance necessary for that era have not been formed. This is especially true relative to policy questions about labor, the less industrialized regions, and the environment. History suggests that effective new international agreements can be made with the right combination of intellectual leadership with two types of political leadership: sponsorship of intergovernmental conferences and the benefactorship of experimental international institutions. Relative to environmental issues, intellectual leadership can come from scientists and scholars of public policy. Sponsorship may come from states with an interest in being considered "first movers" in environmental affairs. Potential benefactors of costly experimental international environmental agreements are harder to find. Governments of first-mover states may be able to devise means for handling the redistributive issues associated with international pollution. Simultaneously, they and other governments will have to find new means of managing other problems associated with the expansion of the industrial system: conflicts between capital and labor, between newer and older industries, between more and less industrialized regions of the world, and among leading industrial states.