Climate Change Is a Great Punchline, Mitt

Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6148672539/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Gage Skidmore</a>/Photoshop by Kate Sheppard

If you didn’t catch Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, you really missed an amazing snapshot of how he’ll treat environmental issues as president: as a laugh line.

Here’s the line from his speech last night. The stage directions are mine:

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans … (Pause for effect, look of mild, mocking amusement on your face. Audience will chuckle here.)

And heal the planet. (Another pause for comedic effect.)

My promise (Pause) is to help you and your family. (Cheers.)

And here’s the video:

Did you get the joke? It’s hilarious that President Obama cares about climate change and promised to do something about it. Mitt Romney will totally not give a crap about that at all, aren’t you glad?

The Gulf Coast is, of course, just starting to recover after yet another major storm hit earlier this week. Climate change makes bad storms worse, and higher sea levels—due to both thermal expansion and the melting of the polar ice caps—also makes storm surge and the resulting flooding way worse, too. And Mitt Romney adjusted his schedule to go to New Orleans on Friday to check out the damage. I’m sure everyone there will finds his remarks really funny.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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