This special issue is our most comprehensive look yet at what could be the biggest story of the 21st century: the fight to save our endangered planet. The wide-ranging articles are both scary and hopeful, describing problems and potential solutions. In our efforts to pull together the most incisive commentary possible, we drew upon our writers and correspondents, as well as on knowledgeable outside journalists, eminent scientists and two prominent public figures long associated with the environmental cause: Al Gore and Mikhail Gorbachev. The many other talented contributors to this enterprise are too numerous to cite here, but one deserves special mention: Eugene Linden, a former TIME senior writer who is currently finishing a book that looks ahead to the next century. He wrote three stories for this issue and helped to conceptualize the entire project.

The issue's distinctive appearance is the work of a design-and-picture team that was led by art director Marti Golon and included Kathleen Kiley, Linda Bell and Jay Colton. Their first job was to find an original way to attract readers to the magazine--no easy task since TIME has mined all the more obvious visual ideas for the 20 environment covers the magazine has done since 1988. Their earth-as-a-pearl concept was deftly executed by photographer Jody Dole, who gathered dozens of oyster shells to find the most alluring specimen. The result was an arresting image that depicts the planet's fragility, we think, but conveys more hope than despair.