Editors Note

• Author: Kelly Rain; Maria Vanko
• Position: Editors - In -Chief
• Pages: 01

Information about the catastrophic impacts of climate change is penetrating global society, from high culture to low culture, at a rapidly increasing rate. Scientific studies about warming trends are often slapped across newspaper covers. Likewise, stories about political pressure to subvert science supporting global warming or interest groups offering bounties to refute climate change experts have increasingly become hard to ignore. Additionally, magazines from the Economist to Vanity Fair are trying to educate people about the importance of going green.

Worldwide, thousands of people have listened to Mr. Al Gore explain the Inconvenient Truth about warming temperatures. Quite possibly it is the palpable effects of the unpredictable weather that is making them pay attention and demand action. The world is unable to forget the horror of the 2004 tsunami and Americans started to pay attention once climate change hit home in a big way with Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans.

With this onslaught of mass information, it is sometimes hard to isolate the direst issues. This annual issue of Sustainable Development Law & Policy ("SDLP") hopes to present some of the most pressing, and important, climate change topics within the legal and policy arenas. Also included are interesting new developments, historical looks at climate law, and evaluations of the effectiveness of current multilateral environmental agreements.

We hope that the reader walks away with an understanding of how multifaceted climate law has become. International, regional, domestic, and sub-national law must be utilized to tackle this problem. Scientists are finally uniting on an international scale to declare that humans have undeniably contributed to global warming; as a result, this fruitless debate must stop. Battles must no longer take place in the scientific field. Human induced climate change is a fact.

The new battle must be waged in the legal and policy fields. Those with the tools to create legal and political change must act now; the devastating (or foreboding) impacts of climate change are being witnessed around the globe. While some argue the tipping point has already occurred, it is never too late to advocate for sound solutions. We hope that this issue of SDLP helps motivate individuals within the legal and political communities to head in the right direction. The ecological footprint upon our globe must be reduced: our habitat depends upon it.

Kelly Rain; Maria Vanko

Editors - In -Chief