Fix the Climate, or the Kid Gets It

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Let’s see. In climate news today, we have Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announcing that you can get a climate bill through the Senate—so long as you include billions in loan guarantees for nuclear plants (because, well, the market thinks they’re lousy investments and won’t finance them. Safety issues aside.). Meanwhile Big Ag becomes the latest industry to launch a campaign to kill what measly climate legislation is on the table (never mind that farmers in general, and the heartland in particular, are likely to see some of global warming’s worst effects). The Freakonomics guys muddle the issue with junk science. We’re headed for a potential debacle during the global climate talks in Copenhagen, and virtually no one in Washington can really be bothered to pay attention to the issue anyway because health care reform is sucking up all the oxygen. Great!

So what is it going to take to get action on this issue? You know the answer—we all do: It’s going to take popular pressure, aka politicians feeling that they have to produce something on this issue to get reelected. And that, in turn, takes convincing Americans that something we care about is actually at risk here. 

And of course something is. Climate change poses the greatest danger not to polar bears, not to glaciers or beaches, but to our kids. Their world, if you read the scientific predictions, is one where the Southwest is a dust bowl; 30 percent of the planet’s species go extinct; 200 million people become climate refugees. And those are the relatively moderate scenarios–there are also the scientists who, looking back over millions of years’ worth of geologic evidence, suggest that the last time we had carbon levels like those we’re headed for now, sea levels were 80 to 130 feet higher than they are today. 

That’s grim stuff, which is why, most of the time, our reaction is “quick, give me something else to think about!” But the love of our children is a powerful force, and it has motivated enormous change in the past. It hasn’t become a real factor on this issue—but what if it did? As Clara and I write in our editors’ note for the upcoming issue of Mother Jones, which is almost entirely devoted to this topic: 

“We still have the power to shape their future. Just for perspective: The entire sum required to buy off Third World opposition to carbon caps is around what we spent to bail out Fannie, Freddie, and AIG. And hey, Europe’s on the hook for at least half. Our kids will measure us by how long we tarried. What will we tell them?”

To dramatize this point, we did something unusual for this special issue: We printed four different covers, featuring four different children and four different headlines. Now it’s your turn. Next week, on the eve of International Day of Climate Action, we’ll debut an app that lets you put your own picture (of your kid, yourself, your cat, your pet lizard) on our cover, and share the image with your friends and your members of Congress. There’s also a contest to create new headlines for the climate cover—we’ll feature the best on our home page. 

Meanwhile, today is Blog Action Day, which means that nearly 8,000 blogs from all around the world are posting climate-change content today. One of the first entries comes from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. What’s he got to say? 

Like every parent, I want to leave a safe and secure world for my children. And I want to be able to look them in the eye because our generation stood up for their future.

Hint, hint, White House Blog: President Obama, no doubt, would agree.

You can follow me on Twitter here. Clara tweets here. Our DC bureau chief, David Corn, tweets, as do our colleagues Daniel Schulman, Nick Baumann, Kate Sheppard, and Rachel Morris. And of course you can follow Mother Jones itself. 

 

 

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.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

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.

payment methods

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.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

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.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate