SUV’s emit as much CO2 as 55 coal-fired plants! And the U.S. is the worst offender…

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Via the Guardian, the Environmental Defence watchdog group has a new report out showing that…

  • Americans represent 5 percent of the world’s population but drive almost a third of its cars
  • Americans’ cars account for nearly half the carbon dioxide pumped out of exhaust pipes into the atmosphere each year
  • U.S. cars play a disproportionate role in global warming because they’re less fuel efficient than passenger vehicles used elsewhere in the world; they emit 15 percent more carbon dioxide because they’re less fuel-efficient and are driven across America’s wide open spaces (see “sprawl,” “exurbs”…)
  • The average U.S. passenger vehicle has a fuel economy of less than 20mpg
  • Overall U.S. fuel consumption will continue to rise in the next few years
  • More SUVs are still sold in the U.S. than any other type of car. (This has been true since 2002.)
  • SUVs “soon will be the main source of automotive CO2 emissions”, emitting the equivalent of 55 large coal-fired power plants.

Ethanol, anyone? Read the full report here.

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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 canā€™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.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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