October 5, 2012

Event: Climate Change’s Sleeper Role in Election 2012

Tim McDonnell/Mother Jones

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WHAT: Climate Change 2012: Political Albatross or Winning Issue?

WHEN: 9:30a.m.-10:30a.m. Wednesday, October 10

WHERE: The Mott House, 122 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC.

Everybody in Washington knows that climate change is a political dog. But what if everybody is wrong? New polling indicates that Americans are very concerned about heat waves and freak storms, and candidates who advocate meaningful action on climate change can turn it into a winning issue.

That’s the subject for what promises to be a lively debate among pollsters, analysts, campaign operatives, and journalists at the first “Climate Desk Live” breakfast briefing in Washington, DC, hosted by award-wining science journalist Chris Mooney. “Not only do most likely but undecided voters think global warming is happening and caused by humans,” Mooney writes of the poll results, “but 61 percent say it will be an important issue in determining who they vote for.”

The author of four books, including Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, Mooney has joined forces with the Climate Desk—a journalistic consortium of news organizations—to bring a provocative series of speakers on climate and energy before Washington’s policy makers and journalists.

This first event in the series—“Climate Change 2012: Political Albatross or Winning Issue?”—will take place from 9:30a.m.-10:30a.m., next Wednesday, October 10, at the Mott House on Capitol Hill, 122 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC.

Confirmed speakers include Joe Romm of Climate Progress, analyst Betsy Taylor of Breakthrough Strategies and Solutions, and Paul Bledsoe, a Washington-based consultant who was the chief staffer on climate change communications in the Clinton White House.

To RSVP for this space-limited event, email CDL@climatedesk.org (breakfast and coffee provided).

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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