February 2, 2012

Tell Us: How Do You Teach Your Kids About Climate Change?


When I was in New Hampshire recently, I met Sarah Larson Dennen, a teacher at Moharimet Elementary School in Madbury. We were talking about something else entirely – the decline of New England’s sugar maple – but another part of our on-carmera interview has stuck with me ever since: how Sarah teaches her young students about climate change.

“Language is really key when you’re talking to kids,” Sarah explained. “I don’t use terms like ‘global warming‘. I use terms like ‘climate change’. And I try to back things up by really showing them data.”

“I look to see that these kids are care-takers of our whole natural world,” she said.

That got me thinking: how do you teach your kids about climate change? You don’t want to tell your kids the world is in uttter peril… right? But if they ask about climate change, what do you say?

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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.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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