January 29, 2010

Osama bin Laden Goes Green?

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Is Osama bin Laden moving from holy warrior to eco warrior? The leader of al-Qeada is now expressing concern about climate change. Or, at least a desire to blame the United States for climate change. Surely this will only lead to more politicization of an issue that clearly doesn’t need to get any more polarized. A. Siegel at Get Energy Smart Now tries to preempt the torrent this is likely to prompt:

That bin Laden is able to, via his distorted lens, gain a glimpse of reality and understand that climate change is a serious issue meriting attention doesn’t suddenly make climate change unreal even though there will be those who seize on this to say things like “bin Laden is against it, therefore I’m for it …”

While bin Laden’s foray into climate is a bit unexpected, he’s apparently seizing on an opportunity to exploit tensions between the US and other countries nonplussed with the current state of climate affairs (see: Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan). It also shows how desperate he is for international support, as Spencer Ackerman notes. And while living in a cave might give him some green cred, I’m going to go out on a limb and say annihilating the infidels isn’t really good evidence that you care about the future of humankind.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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