‘We need to be realistic’: AOC predicts Miami won’t exist ‘in a few years’ without Green New Deal – Washington Examiner

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez predicted that Miami will no longer exist in just a couple of years if the Green New Deal is not passed.

“When it comes to climate change, what is not realistic is not responding with a solution on the scale of the crisis — because what’s not realistic is Miami not existing in a few years,” the New York Democrat said Wednesday at an NAACP forum. “So we need to be realistic about the problem.”

Ocasio-Cortez, 29, touted the Green New Deal as the solution to that problem.

The freshman lawmaker rolled out the proposal in February, which was widely criticized for an FAQ section that advocated for ending air travel and meat production. Ocasio-Cortez said the section was not meant to be published and blamed a staffer who “had a really bad day at work.”

In July, then-Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti revealed that the Green New Deal was not “originally a climate thing at all … we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Chakrabarti, 33, said the Green New Deal was about changing the economy to make it more equitable.

“I think … it’s dual. It is both rising to the challenge that is existential around climate and it is building an economy that contains more prosperity,” he said. “More sustainability in that prosperity — and more broadly shared prosperity, equitability, and justice throughout.”