Yes We Cancun?

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The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting began in Cancun on Monday, providing another chance for world leaders to huddle on solutions to the problems posed by rising global greenhouse gas emissions. This year’s Conference of the Parties—or COP, as it’s known—is certainly kicking off to much less hype than last year’s meeting in Copenhagen, when delegates were expecting a major breakthrough on negotiations. Expectations are much lower this year, but there’s hope that progress might yet be possible.

You can check out my run down of what to expect over the next two weeks at Mother Jones HQ. I’ll be reporting live from Mexico for the next two weeks, which you can catch on Blue Marble and Twitter. In the meantime, here are some headlines from the first day of the event:

EU warns that U.N. climate talks “risk losing relevance”

Time for compromise, troubled UN climate talks told

US sees progress easing climate rifts with China

Frustrations show as climate talks resume

Cancún climate talks: In search of the holy grail of climate change policy

 

Also, take a look at the massive art project 350.org pulled off on the eve of the Cancun talks. And here’s a video of the opening ceremony on Monday.

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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.

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 won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—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.

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