Dispatch from the Society of Environmental Journalists Conference

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At this weekend’s conference of environmental journalists in Palo Alto, the AP’s science writer, Seth Borenstein, moderated a plenary session called “Covering Climate Change.” A day before the event, he received an email from Marc Morano, a senior aid to Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.)—the former head of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and an adamant climate change denier—urging him to question the panel’s seeming assumption that scientists had concluded that climate change was a reality. Borenstein promptly forwarded the email to several other journalists.

Contrary to popular opinion (and Mother Jonescareful reporting), Morano wrote, scientists who challenge the climate change hypothesis are not a well-funded minority, but individuals whose research has held its own scientifically despite the PR victory of well-funded liberal fear-mongers.

You’ve gotta give it to Inhofe, whose major funders list reads like a who’s who of energy and forest products corporations—he’s really stuck to his guns.

But, back in reality, the experts at the conference indicated time and again that global warming was already hard upon us and that we need to act now to cap carbon emissions unless we want things to get really ugly. We also need to start planning for the consequences of climate change (the buzzword is “adaptation.”) Phillip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said “there has been no thought given to this issue” in the United States, despite the fact that by 2050, 100 million people a year could be displaced by weather disasters—and research suggests that among the hardest-hit countries will be Mexico, making our current immigration problems look like child’s play.

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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.

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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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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