House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal would not score in Congress since it was very unfocused and too broad, adding that now is a time when climate change needed “focused, determined decision-making,” Newsweek reported.
The resolution dubbed Green New Deal was submitted to the House by the young Democrat, and it responded to “several related crises” in the United States – social, economic and environmental—with the latter posing an existential threat to the whole planet.
Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, participated in a sit-in at Pelosi’s office last November, before she was sworn in to Congress, to demand more action on climate change.
However, Nancy Pelosi said that Ocasio-Cortez’s resolution “goes beyond what our charge is. Our charge is about saving the planet,” adding that the Green New Deal would likely run into the trillions of dollars.
“And then they have, I don’t know if it’s single-payer or Medicare for All… It’s kind of…a broader agenda. All good values, but nonetheless, not what we hope to achieve with this focused, determined, decision-making: You’re either for the planet or you are not. There is no Plan B for the planet. We have to preserve it, and it is in great jeopardy,” Pelosi added.
She also said: “You have to make decisions that you’re going to reach certain goals, and some of the goals we think are achievable. That’s why public opinion is so important.”
In one anecdote shared by Pelosi, she called House Republicans “pathetic” as she recounted how, after Democrats lost their majority in the 2010 midterm elections, the GOP restored Styrofoam to the cafeteria.
“No more recycling, everything went in the same trash,” Pelosi said. “You know, they’re really pathetic. Because they are just handmaidens of the fossil-fuel industry, period—when they’re not handmaidens of the gun industry.”
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