When somebody is looking to start a family, it’s natural for the mind to start filling with questions. Who is the child more likely to resemble, either physically or personality-wise? What will I discover about myself when I start parenting? How am I going to explain the world’s big issues when they ask?
However, for some couples, that question sounds less like “what kind of world is my child coming into” and more like “is this the kind of world I want to bring a child into in the first place?”
And with one Instagram live video, Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought that question out in the open.
On Sunday night, Ocasio-Cortez streamed a live video where she discussed how dire the effects of climate change will soon be.
In it, she said that the perils ahead “lead young people to have a legitimate question…is it OK to still have children?”
She also notes that this is already a difficult prospect for young people, especially if they’ve recently graduated from college.
After all, tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt doesn’t often leave people in the kind of financial position where starting a family seems like a responsible decision.
However, the main point she’s addressing here concerns the kind of world that future children will inherit.
As she put it, “There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult.”
But of course, there was more going on in this video than just bumming people out about the prospect of having kids.
And there’s a hint to what compelled her to make this video in one particular statement she makes.
She said, “This idea that ‘I’ve been working on this for X amount of years’, it’s like, not good enough. We need a universal sense of urgency.”
That statement may sound a little obscure in and of itself, but it becomes clearer if you heard about a recent meeting between young activists and Senator Diane Feinstein.
These youths spoke to Feinstein about what they saw as an urgent need to support a a collection of policies known as the Green New Deal.
However, the response they received wasn’t particularly encouraging.
As The New Yorker reported, Feinstein said, “You know what’s interesting about this group? I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that.”
She said all that to say that Ocasio-Coretz’s and Senator Ed Mackey’s Green New Deal isn’t politically viable, but it’s hard to agree or disagree without knowing what it is.
According to NPR , it’s a nonbinding resolution that’s supposed to revolutionize how the government deals with climate change with a large emphasis on drastic measures undertaken quickly.
For instance, it seeks to upgrade all buildings in the country for energy efficiency, work with farmers to eliminate as much pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as possible while promoting “universal access to healthy food,” and overhauling all of the nation’s transportation systems to reduce emissions.
Despite the name, what the Green New Deal seeks to accomplish isn’t purely environmental.
As NPR reported , it also seeks to provide every American with a guaranteed job “with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security.”
It also calls for high quality healthcare for all Americans. In line with the aggressive action that much of the climate science community agrees is necessary for fighting climate change, this is all supposed to happen within 10 years.
Although it is nonbinding, there are still cited reasons why politicians like Senator Feinstein would avoid supporting it.
According to NPR , if a nonbinding resolution passes, it means that Congress is agreeing that what is laid out in the Green New Deal should be done in the time allotted.
Not only would some politicians balk at the idea that this can be accomplished in 10 years, but even if everyone in the House and the Senate agreed with everything laid out in it (a massive “if”), there’s also the possibility that it could cost trillions of dollars to implement.
So even though it can’t really force anyone to do anything by itself, it’s still unlikely to pass.
Even if absolutely everyone in the Democratic Party threw their support behind it, which doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, it has little chance of getting anywhere in the Republican-dominated senate.
However, the Green New Deal’s potential power is a little more nuanced than just whether it passes or not.
As Ocasio-Coretz told NPR, the Green New Deal’s job isn’t to attract the hearts of Congress, but voters. The more the policies contained in it excite the public, the more likely they are to pressure politicians about it, which could get the more savvy ones to see which way the wind is blowing.
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As she said, “Where I do have trust is in my colleagues’ capacity to change and evolve and be adaptable and listen to their constituents.”
h/t: NPR
