The Gulf Disaster, in Perspective

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How big is the Gulf spill? Over at Beowulfe.com, you can use Google mapping technology to see what it would look like over your town.

Andy Revkin talked to the site creator, Andy Lintner, about what inspired him to develop it. “I realized that if more people understood the actual scale of the spill, they would be angry too,” said Lintner. “That anger is necessary to force the change we need to prevent this kind of thing happening again.”

I mapped it over my current home in Washington, D.C., but it stretches almost all the way up to my hometown in southern New Jersey. The thought of a giant pool of oil stretching from the Capitol dome all the way to my family’s farm is indeed shocking.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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