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Call this phone number “4 FACTS” and you’ll hear a recorded message warning that the U.N. is rushing into a climate treaty that will have major impacts on the U.S. economy, jobs, and lifestyles. The message continues to claim that the still-unwritten treaty will exempt 132 of 166 nations — this despite President Clinton’s Oct. 22 announcement of the U.S. bargaining position that no nation should be exempted. The message then goes on to ask for your name and address so you can be sent additional information.

The Climatefacts.org Web site offers a selection of gloomy economic analyses, anti-treaty “grassroots” commentary, and greenhouse counter-science. It also directs readers to a list of just eight “other sites” out of several thousand relating to climate change. These seven are:

  • The Science and Environmental Policy Project, founded in 1990 as an affiliate of a Moonie think tank. Its director Fred Singer is one of a half- dozen pro-industry scientists who regularly appear before congressional committees and Wise Use conferences to lambast mainstream scientific thinking on global warming. His last scientific peer-reviewed publication was in 1971.

  • The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based conservative think-tank that promotes “free-market environmentalism” and issues policy papers attacking environmental science and environmental organizations.

  • World Climate Report, funded by the Western Fuels Association to counter mainstream theories on global warming. Its editor Patrick Michaels is another of industry’s favorite “climate skeptics.” Michaels has admittedly received hundreds of thousands of dollars in research funding from the oil and coal industries.

  • The American Petroleum Institute is of course the voice of the half-trillion-dollar-a-year oil and gas industry, which would be hardest hit by any reduction of CO2 emissions. Not surprisingly, they argue that such reductions are unnecessary. Surprisingly, British Petroleum has broken ranks, admitting that the science of climate change appears sound, and pledging to reduce its own company emissions, and increase investment in solar and other energy alternatives. BP’s position does not appear on the API web site.

  • The Global Climate Coalition is similar to the Global Climate Information Project. It was founded in 1989 by several dozen major corporations to “counter the myth of global warming.” It continues to promote this strategy of sheer denial, while the Information Project focuses on the alleged dire economic consequences of a global agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions.

  • The George C. Marshall Institute is another conservative think-tank and long-time “Star Wars” promoter funded by Scaife, Bradley and other right-wing foundations. It was the first player to attack the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s 1995 finding that the Earth is facing — or has already entered — a period of climatic instability.

  • The “Cooler Heads” Coalition

    For a comprehensive listing of science-related climate change Web sites, try the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program.

  • WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

    “Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

    That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

    That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

    Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

    This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

    “This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

    Wow.

    And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

    About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

    If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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    WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

    “Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

    That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

    That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

    Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

    This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

    “This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

    Wow.

    And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

    About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

    If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

    payment methods

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