Reality Check From Bali

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This Washington Post article conveys in short and sweet style how serious the U.S.’s refusal in Bali to accept emissions caps is.

Europe: frustrated, vowing to boycott Bush’s distracter tactic, the “major economies” meetings he’s hosting on global warming. Brazil—home to the world’s largest intact forest—threatening not to comply with rules that only apply to developing countries.

Most disturbing of all, Americans support carbon emissions caps because they’re the only way of fending off catastrophic climate change.

As Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister for climate and energy, put it, the targets don’t come from “figures taken at random,” she said. Rather, the 25 percent by 2020 “reports very specifically back to what the IPCC tells us.”

Compare the sanity of that remark—we’re doing what the best scientists tell us we have to—to the childish churlishness of this one, made by James L. Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, explaining why the U.S. refuses to do the right thing and accept the caps: “We will lead. The U.S. will lead. But leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.”

Despite Americans’ political will, our government is standing in the way of the best documented solution for the greatest problem the world has ever faced.

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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.

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