AOC Just Tagged Republican Mike Lee for His Embarrassing Climate Change Shtick

Meanwhile, the Green New Deal she co-sponsored is making Republicans sweat.


We'll say it again: the time is over for our society to put any stock in the words of old people unconcerned with climate change because they'll be dead when the worst effects take hold. They're not alarmed, sure. They'll be dead and, often, they've convinced themselves they've hoarded enough money and power that their kids and grandkids will be able to ride it out. This is completely incorrect, but again: they'll be dead. We won't even get to say, I told you so.

There's a new Republican climate-change take making the rounds, you see. Having cycled through partial acceptance, John McCain backing cap-and-trade, complete denial, throwing snowballs on the Senate floor, muddying the waters around the scientific consensus, suggesting there's nothing the government can do, suggesting nothing we do matters because China, and suggesting the whole thing is a globalist plot to establish a One World Government, they've settled on a new one: own the libs!

Senator Mike Lee, once of those Principled Never Trumpers who believes much of the same dumb shit as the president but thinks he's a bit rude, put on quite a performance on the floor of the Senate today:

This is a United States senator grappling with an existential threat to human civilization as we know it. His whole presentation on a crisis that will require transforming our economy on a massive scale in a coordinated effort with the rest of our species this.

Please explain how this Civil, Adult-in-the-Room Republican is behaving differently from the own-the-libs caucus chaired by Donald Trump. This serves no purpose except to piss off people who have a conscience and some understanding of the issue—and, of course, to make us all just a little bit dumber. (This is also a description of Conservative Comedy as a genre.) Here was the thrilling conclusion:

Have more kids is now the answer to a crisis where food insecurity and water scarcity will likely lead not just to human suffering, but to war. But since this whole thing was designed to get him coverage on Fox News and The Daily Caller anyway, Lee made it a dig on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC, of course, is a co-author of the Green New Deal—a still-rough blueprint for tackling the crisis which Lee and his allies, who have proposed zero plans, just laugh at. Here's something for people whose brains haven't atrophied to laugh at:

These people are embarrassing, and they deserve to be embarrassed. Shame might be struggling for survival as a social force in this country of ours, but we ought to try our best to use it on people like this.

In a true miracle, though, one of Lee's Republican colleagues demonstrated an ounce of concern for future generations on Monday. Politico was on the case. Step right up, Senator Lamar Alexander:

"It's important to have a Republican message on climate change that's clear," Alexander told reporters after a floor speech on the topic. “It's clear why we're opposed to the Green New Deal — it's an assault on cars and cows and combustion — but it's not as clear what we're for."

"I believe climate change is real,” Alexander added. “I believe humans are a major cause of it, and I think a new 'Manhattan Project for Clean Energy' is something that most Republicans could support, and I would hope most Democrats could too."

Sadly, this is progress—though it does lack detail, and it might ultimately be bullshit. Trump crony Matt Gaetz is "drafting a 'Green Real Deal' resolution that would acknowledge climate change as a security threat while avoiding calls for sharp reductions in fossil fuels." Because grappling with a problem means declaring we don't have to do anything to fix it.

But Alexander was pretty explicit that the Green New Deal is now forcing conservatives to come up with an alternative. Now that AOC and Senator Ed Markey had the courage to put something on the table, they're dragging Republicans and status-quo Democrats into the discussion. It is no longer possible to deny the problem, but more than that, it's no longer possible not to present voters with a workable solution. Someday, if we survive this mess, we might thank them for their role in all this.

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