Brother Can You Spare A Gallon?

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“Economists predict that reducing our energy use by more than 20% will require price increases for most types of energy.” These, of course, are the same industry economists who predicted that the 1970 Clean Air Act would wreck the economy — we now know that what really hurt the economy was our dependence on foreign oil.

Converting the global energy market from fossil fuels to renewables will no doubt cause some economic dislocation during the switch — just as the switch from whale oil to petroleum-based lubricants impacted the machine age 100 years ago — but that doesn’t mean it will harm the economy. More than 2,500 economists, including eight Nobel laureates, recently signed a statement declaring, “Sound economic analysis shows there are policy options that would slow climate change without harming American living standards, and these measures may in fact improve U.S. productivity in the longer run.” For details on the “Economics of Climate Change,” visit Redefining Progress.

As for the price of gasoline, the U.S. continues to guzzle some of the cheapest gas in the world, paying on average less than one-third the price in European and other developed nations; in fact, we pay 2 to 5 times less than consumers in any country outside North America. If our various government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry are removed, the price of gas will rise as the true costs of the product are revealed, and the weak incentive to make cars more fuel-efficient will become much stronger. With more efficient cars, we’d spend about the same amount of money getting where we’re going — we’d just use less gas to do it. And you can guess how an oil company might feel about that.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists 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 hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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