Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin cracked a joke about far-left climate extremist Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, suggesting that she should go to college and get educated before lecturing the rest of the world about economic issues.
Mnuchin was asked by a reporter, “Does Greta Thunberg’s call for an end to fossil fuel investment threaten U.S. economic growth?”
“Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused,” Mnuchin said, later adding this was “a joke. That was funny.”
“After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us,” Mnuchin continued.
Ocasio-Cortez did not find Mnuchin’s joke to be funny, claiming on Twitter, “If you don’t have an economics degree like Greta, they’ll mock you for not having one. If you DO have one, as I do, they’ll claim it’s illegitimate. Haters gonna hate & deniers will deny. They will deny logic, science, and environmental consensus in order to protect oligarchy.”
Thunberg responded on Twitter by writing, “My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up. So either you tell us how to achieve this mitigation or explain to future generations and those already affected by the climate emergency why we should abandon our climate commitments.”
Thunberg has a history of making extreme remarks, including:
- “We demand that at this year’s forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels. We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now – as in right now.”
- “Fossil fuels are literally choking the life from us.”
- “Fossil fuels are literally choking the life from us. That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.”
- “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.”
- “There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is. You are failing us but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you and if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line the world is waking up and change is coming whether you like it or not.”
President Donald Trump also took a shot at the far-left climate extremists in Davos, saying, “This is not a time for pessimism; this is a time for optimism. Fear and doubt is not a good thought process because this is a time for tremendous hope and joy and optimism and action.”
“But to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,” Trump continued. “They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune-tellers — and I have them and you have them, and we all have them, and they want to see us do badly, but we don’t let that happen. They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the ’70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s. These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform, and control every aspect of our lives.”
“We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country, or eradicate our liberty. America will always be the proud, strong, and unyielding bastion of freedom,” Trump concluded. “In America, we understand what the pessimists refuse to see: that a growing and vibrant market economy focused on the future lifts the human spirit and excites creativity strong enough to overcome any challenge — any challenge by far.”