Scott Brown Gets the Oily Bird Award

In honor of his vote last week to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating planet-warming gases, activists from the environmental group 1Sky delivered Scott Brown (R-Mass.) an “Oily Bird Award” yesterday—a fake, oil-coated pelican. Actually, it was a flamingo covered in brown stuff, but you get the idea.

Brown probably deserved two oily bird awards this week, since on Wednesday he basically thumbed his nose at the idea of a price on carbon after getting called in for a special meeting at the White House. It’s not every senator who gets a one-on-one session with the president, but Brown has been one of the few Republicans to vote with Democrats on key issues of late.

Emerging from the meeting, Brown told reporters, “I basically told him I’m not in favor of, nor could I support, a national energy tax or cap-and-trade proposal … But I am very excited about working with him in a bipartisan manner to come up with a comprehensive energy plan to address a whole host of issues.”

Here’s 1Sky presenting the Oily Bird Award to a Brown staffer:

(Photo courtsey of 1Sky.)

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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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.

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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.

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