Global Warming Fires Up Congress's Resident Snowflake

New York Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasted no time getting down to business when freshman orientation began Tuesday. She decisively marched to the House Democratic Leader’s office, ready to make her stance known to probable-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

When she arrived, an environmental activist sit-in was set for Pelosi’s suite. It was then that Ocasio-Cortez showed intrepid leadership by…joining the protest.

She didn’t meet with the woman who’s likely to become speaker. Instead, Congress’s new, youngest member – the supposed posterchild for the Millennial Generation – sat outside the leader’s office, like a plain-old activist. It was as though she will never get to vote for speaker or influence the legislative process directly.

Before the sit-in, Ocasio-Cortez explained her reasoning: “[W]e need a Green New Deal, and we need to get to 100% renewables because our lives depend upon it…The IPCC themselves – they say we have ten years left.”

Just ten years, people. Our very lives depend on decimating America’s economy.

She continued: “I – not just as an elected member but as a 29-year-old woman – am thinking not just about what we’re gonna accomplish in the next two years but the America that we’re going to live in in the next 30 years. And I don’t want to see Miami under water, I don’t want to see my own district under water.”

Hence her “bold, progressive” plan: “100% renewable energy.” You know, the kind of policy she proudly – without any basis – declared “the country is here to support.” Because, like, Americans want to lose millions of jobs, stifle a trillion dollars of economic growth and erode U.S. leadership in energy production – all in exchange for sky-high energy prices and the fantastical satisfaction that we just saved the planet.

At an October fundraiser, Ocasio-Cortez affirmed unequivocally, “There’s no debate as to whether we should continue producing fossil fuels. There’s no debate – we should not. Every single scientific consensus points to that.”

Ignoring the utterly groundless third sentence, her goal is clear: eradicate fossil fuel production. No debate! The science is settled! Act now – or NY-14 will drown!

Set aside how a soon-to-be member of Congress participated in a college campus snowflake-like melt-in outside her party’s leader’s office – and consider the inconvenient facts about how Congresswoman Millennial’s plan to gut oil and gas production would crush everyone, including Millennials.

Fact One: The oil and gas and petrochemical industries support 10.3 million jobs and a whopping $1.3 trillion in economic output annually. But let’s just pull the rug out from underneath millions of Americans and trash the economy, shall we?

Fact Two: As of 2015, Millennials make up 34% of total industry employment. If you’re a math-challenged “democratic socialist,” that’s one-third of all O&G workers nationally who would lose under her proposal.

Fact Three: 88% of Americans own their own car. Imagine an America that didn’t produce fossil fuels. Would 286 million Americans either give up our autos or willingly accept a doubling or tripling or quadrupling of gas and energy prices to satisfy environmental activists? How about all the companies that rely on trucks and airplanes for transportation? Who will deliver all that avocado toast we Millennials love to the nearest Whole Foods?

Fact Four: Americans keep rejecting attempts to gut O&G production. We can see this in what the Wall Street Journal called “A Green Ballot Trouncing.” Colorado voters definitively defeated Proposition 112 – which would have made 85% of minerals off-limits in the state. Washington State thwarted a carbon tax – for the second consecutive year. Arizonans and Alaskans killed initiatives, too.

Fact Five: From 2008-2015, American crude production soared 88%; since 2005, natural gas production has risen 48%. Gas prices, fuel imports and heating and electricity costs all declined – along with carbon emissions. With relatively minor government direction, O&G has driven considerable gains in environmental protection. Technological improvements in fracking helped the U.S. reduce emissions to 1992 levels and become the world’s leader in containing them. In 2017 alone – while global carbon emissions from energy rose – for the ninth time in the 21st Century, the U.S. reduced emissions by more than any other country – by about the same amount as the European Union increased theirs.

Fact Six: Ocasio-Cortez might respond that, if we terminate fossil fuel production, it won’t take long to retrain workers for new “green energy jobs.” However, the reality is that the U.S. does not have the resources, capacity or infrastructure to support a rapid shift to renewables, nor could Americans – especially poorer and middle-class folks – afford the astronomical cost of switching over on such a wide scale. It is untenable and unsustainable.

Congresswoman-elect Ocasio-Cortez says she’s deeply worried about the America we’re going to live in 30 years from now because she’s “a 29-year-old woman.” As a 28-year-old man, so do I. Yet the inconvenient facts reveal her “solution” to be short-sighted and harmful. I’m all for environmental stewardship and combatting climate change. But if we do it her way, the entire country – especially our generation, mine and Ocasio-Cortez’s – will lose out, big time.

All so Congress’s new resident snowflake won’t fear of melting from the global warming.