Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been mocked for claiming that climate change is a product of racial injustice, as she relaunched her controversial Green New Deal.
The New York congresswoman on spoke in front of the Capitol to promote her plan, which set a series of ambitious targets such as eliminating U.S. greenhouse gas emissions within a decade and transitioning the economy away from fossil fuels.
Ocasio-Cortez said that climate change must be viewed through the lens of race.
‘The climate crisis is a crisis born of injustice, and it is a crisis born of the pursuit of profit at any and all human and ecological cost,’ she said.
‘Which means that we must recognize in legislation that the trampling of indigenous rights is a cause of climate change, that the trampling of racial justice is a cause of climate change.
‘Because we are allowing people, and we are allowing ourselves, to deny ourselves human rights and deny people the right to health care, the right to housing and education.’
Her comments on Tuesday were immediately seized upon by her conservative critics, after Mike Berg, deputy communications director for the Republican National Convention, tweeted: ‘Wut?’
Commentator Mark Steyn appeared on Fox News on Wednesday night, calling it ‘rubbish’ and laughable.
‘The people who really laugh at this are Xi and the Chinese politburo,’ he told host Tucker Carlson.
‘Because they don’t have to bother talking about all of this. It frees up all of their time to talk about something important and something true.’
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