Event: Climate Change’s Sleeper Role in Election 2012

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WHAT: Climate Change 2012: Political Albatross or Winning Issue?

WHEN: 9:30a.m.-10:30a.m. Wednesday, October 10

WHERE: The Mott House, 122 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC.

Everybody in Washington knows that climate change is a political dog. But what if everybody is wrong? New polling indicates that Americans are very concerned about heat waves and freak storms, and candidates who advocate meaningful action on climate change can turn it into a winning issue.

That’s the subject for what promises to be a lively debate among pollsters, analysts, campaign operatives, and journalists at the first “Climate Desk Live” breakfast briefing in Washington, DC, hosted by award-wining science journalist Chris Mooney. “Not only do most likely but undecided voters think global warming is happening and caused by humans,” Mooney writes of the poll results, “but 61 percent say it will be an important issue in determining who they vote for.”

The author of four books, including Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, Mooney has joined forces with the Climate Desk—a journalistic consortium of news organizations—to bring a provocative series of speakers on climate and energy before Washington’s policy makers and journalists.

This first event in the series—“Climate Change 2012: Political Albatross or Winning Issue?”—will take place from 9:30a.m.-10:30a.m., next Wednesday, October 10, at the Mott House on Capitol Hill, 122 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC.

Confirmed speakers include Joe Romm of Climate Progress, analyst Betsy Taylor of Breakthrough Strategies and Solutions, and Paul Bledsoe, a Washington-based consultant who was the chief staffer on climate change communications in the Clinton White House.

To RSVP for this space-limited event, email CDL@climatedesk.org (breakfast and coffee provided).

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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.

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