August 31, 2012

Climate Change Is a Great Punchline, Mitt

Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6148672539/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Gage Skidmore</a>/Photoshop by Kate Sheppard

If you didn’t catch Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, you really missed an amazing snapshot of how he’ll treat environmental issues as president: as a laugh line.

Here’s the line from his speech last night. The stage directions are mine:

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans … (Pause for effect, look of mild, mocking amusement on your face. Audience will chuckle here.)

And heal the planet. (Another pause for comedic effect.)

My promise (Pause) is to help you and your family. (Cheers.)

And here’s the video:

Did you get the joke? It’s hilarious that President Obama cares about climate change and promised to do something about it. Mitt Romney will totally not give a crap about that at all, aren’t you glad?

The Gulf Coast is, of course, just starting to recover after yet another major storm hit earlier this week. Climate change makes bad storms worse, and higher sea levels—due to both thermal expansion and the melting of the polar ice caps—also makes storm surge and the resulting flooding way worse, too. And Mitt Romney adjusted his schedule to go to New Orleans on Friday to check out the damage. I’m sure everyone there will finds his remarks really funny.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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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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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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