The Planet is Dying, Exxon is Unabashed

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Polar bears stranded on ice drifts, looking like dogs abandoned by their owners. Your favorite beach underwater before you can take your grandchildren there. Species die-offs. Scorching summers. Deadly droughts.

Sounds melodramatic, perhaps, but it’s fact. Inexorable fact. Our only hope is that it won’t be worse. I don’t think it’s overstating to call this the greatest moral imperative of our lifetime since, well, our lifetimes depend on it.

But Exxon is unabashed. The Guardian reports that the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank funded and led by Exxon, has offered scientists $10,000 apiece to uncover weaknesses in the UN report on climate change released yesterday. The report states with 90 percent certainty that humans are at fault for climate change, and that changes already in motion will continue for centuries.

(Do I need to repeat that Mother Jones broke the news that Exxon funded climate change denial, and has been following the story closely ever since?)

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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