Sarah Silverman Meets Climate

Photo by Kate Sheppard.

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I can’t attend this event tonight, but I imagine it will be quite a hoot: Phelim McAleer, the filmmaker behind Not Evil, Just Wrong, debates Amanda Little, author of Power Trip, a new book on clean energy solutions. And it’s hosted by Sarah Silverman and sponsored by Lexus (yes, the car company).

McAleer, a climate skeptic, created the video now used as a recruitment tool for Tea Partiers, as Stephanie Mencimer reported last fall. I also encountered McAleer at the Copenhagen climate summit last December getting kicked out of a press conference. And Little is a former coworker of mine at Grist, whose new book on the energy past and future of the US is a must-read. And Silverman … well, she’s better known for jokes that I can’t repeat on our blog. Like this one.

From the press release:

On Tuesday, March 30, 2010, Lexus will introduce the CT 200h premium compact hybrid for the first time to North America with an original event – a debate between a proponent and a skeptic of climate change.

Welcome to the darker side of green.

The exchange, moderated by the one and only Sarah Silverman, will include the journalist and author of Power Trip Amanda Little (the proponent) debating the director and producer of Not Evil Just Wrong Phelim McAleer (the skeptic).

Actually, I’m pretty sure there have been debates between skeptics and those who believe in climate change in the past. But it probably hasn’t been as funny. It’s taking place at the New York Auto Show, for anyone in the area, and we’ll try to get video afterwards. Just think — all we’ve needed to bring together the two sides of the climate debate for all these years was the introduction of a hybrid luxury car.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

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