When I was a child, I could always count on my grandpa having Fudgsicles in the freezer. Back then, it didn’t register that this endless supply of summer treats was really free childcare for my parents. The distinction would have been meaningless to me, anyway. I spent time with my grandparents because they were my grandparents. Nobody explained to me that someone’s schedule was being accommodated; it was simply a fact that my grandparents were intimately involved in my life. I love them and liked it that way. 
Parents and grandparents online are now litigating what I have decided to refer to as the Great Grandparent Debate. Naturally, everyone has chosen the most uncharitable possible version of everyone else’s argument.
Young parents say they wish their children’s grandparents were more inclined to be helpful, that grandparents today seem uninterested in family, preoccupied by vacations and lunches and free time. When they do show up, they’re scrolling social media. Grandparents, or more specifically, the people defending them, retort that grandparents have lives of their own and no one is entitled to their time.
This is true. Grandparents are allowed to travel, have friends, hobbies, rest, and generally remain human after their own children reproduce. Some of them are still working, some care for aging parents, and some have health limitations that make chasing children around all day genuinely challenging. 
Still, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what young parents are asking for here. My observation is that for most, the frustration is not that their parents won’t organize their lives around their grandchildren, but that the kind of family they grew up in disappeared precisely when they needed it themselves.
Like me, many of today’s parents recall childhoods marked by afternoons at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. They remember grandparents at baseball games and birthday parties and regular family dinners. They are bewildered to discover that their own parents seem not to remember those things — or at least not to recognize that they were once the beneficiaries of precisely the kind of help they now dismiss as entitlement.
This debate has centered on the question of whether or not grandparents “owe” anyone free childcare, but that is the wrong frame. Of course they don’t. Family units, though, do not exist by the measurements of individual rights and enforceable debts.
“I don’t owe you anything” is, in fact, a very poor foundation for a family.
Families can be demanding. They can take advantage of one another. Sometimes, yes, we do <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-next-parental-rights-battle-is-coming-from-inside-the-family">need boundaries</a>, but a family is not a series of negotiated boundaries between autonomous adults. Brought to its logical conclusion, this way of thinking produces something that hardly resembles a family at all. Babies enter the world contributing nothing and requiring nearly everything. This alone tells us that family is an institution governed by something greater than transactional exchange. Eventually, if we are fortunate and have stewarded our relationships well, care reverses as we age.
The point is that nobody’s ledger ever balances neatly. Nor should it. Relationships, and most importantly family, are a form of inconvenience. Thinking of others&#8217; needs and going out of your way to meet them is inherent. Boundaries are not to be understood as the organizing principle for family, but rather a tool, something occasionally necessary within family. Boundaries exist to preserve healthy relationships. They do not relieve us of the obligations that relationships entail. 
My grandparents have given to me in ways I could never repay. Now that I have a child of my own, I understand that their generosity was also a gift to my parents. And I think it is reasonable to hope that the same spirit of generosity will pass forward, extending from generation to generation. This is the strange economy of family. It is also why I am reluctant to accept the increasingly common idea that a parent’s work is finished when his children reach adulthood. We benefit from sacrifices made by the generations before us, and in turn are called to make sacrifices for those who come after. 
The responsibility of a parent shifts with time, of course. Grandparents should not be expected to jump in and raise an entirely new generation. But grandchildren are not an entirely new obligation, either. They are not imposed separately upon grandparents, but an extension of the family they have already spent decades building.
The task of a parent is lifelong. Perhaps later expressions of devoted parenthood require remaining the kind of parent whose presence makes the weight of family life a bit easier to carry for your own children. The goal of raising independent children is really more about maturation than total freedom. 
In any case, the data suggest this problem is not nearly as universal as the internet would have us believe. Research from the Institute for Family Studies finds that <a href="https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/reports/ifs-womenwork-nov2025-final2.pdf">71% of mothers </a>with children under 5 receive at least some help from extended family. For all the online hand-wringing and boomer-blaming, American families still run on a remarkable degree of unpaid acts of love.
Still, the anecdotes emerging from this debate reveal something worth examining, particularly the theatrics of it all. There is a world of difference between a grandparent who cannot watch the children on Saturday and one who makes a production of reminding everyone that she has already “done her time” or, worse, agreeing while making sure everyone understands what an imposition the grandchildren are. Generosity offered resentfully becomes its own kind of burden.
Surely there is room for a little more grace on both sides. If you can help, say yes and mean it. If you can&#8217;t, say no graciously. And if you are fortunate enough to receive that help, accept it with gratitude. Family life is demanding enough without keeping score on every favor.
I suppose what troubles me most about the Great Grandparent Debate is the suggestion that the obligations of family are somehow exhausted once we have fulfilled our own immediate responsibilities. For all our talk of what families owe one another, we seem remarkably eager to wipe our hands clean and declare our obligations fulfilled at some point.
Perhaps, then, we have been too quick to concede the central premise of this debate. Do grandparents owe their children free childcare? Not in the contractual sense. No one is entitled to demand 40 hours a week from Grandma. But in the deeper sense of what family entails, I am not so sure the answer is no.
We owe our families things that cannot be invoiced or neatly measured. We owe them our presence, consideration, and willingness to be inconvenienced. We owe some portion of our time and attention that others once so generously gave to us. And when our children become parents themselves, I think we owe them more than a pat on the back and the assurance that our work is finished.
Grandparents need not surrender independence. But we should not confuse independence with exemption. Family is not something we retire from. It is something we remain responsible for and dutiful to, even as our place within it changes.
The Great Grandparent Debate has revealed a strange understanding of family that allows us to benefit from the sacrifices of one generation while declaring ourselves off the hook for what comes next. We ought to aspire to leave our children more than fond memories of a family that once knew how to show up for one another.
***
Danielle Franz is the CEO of the American Conservation Coalition.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-1368274053

A New Family Feud Has Grandparents And Parents At Each Other’s Throats

childcare

family

grandparents

lifestyle

parenting

There is dirt on my kitchen floor again. My 17-month-old son, Calvin, tracked it in and I am delighted: My plan is working.
These days there is no shortage of ways to indoctrinate a child into climate dread. I could stack my son’s nursery shelves with titles such as &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Change-Babies-Baby-University-ebook/dp/B08CL5B7K7">Climate Change for Babies</a>&#8221; or &#8220;<a href="https://www.getepic.com/book/64046930/baby-loves-green-energy">Baby Loves Green Energy!</a>&#8221; I won’t waste my money. The two very small cowboy boots sitting by the door are the best environmental education I can give him. His childhood is the largest conservation project I will ever run, and it costs me nothing but time.
Nearly every policy I’ve ever worked on expires in an election cycle or two. My son will defend Daniel Boone National Forest for the next 80 years. This is where he first watched his daddy build a campfire, and he learned to love it before he could say its name. I hire young conservationists constantly and can tell within 10 minutes who spent time outside as a kid. Those are the ones who feel responsible for a place and take action. The others just feel guilty about existing.
As an employer, I am not paying people to feel bad. Climate guilt is cheap, it is useless, and it burns young people out so fast that they go looking for a new cause within three years. I would rather hire people who view the land as their national inheritance, as a part of themselves they need to protect. This is why my organization has never bet everything on what happens in Washington, D.C., but instead has built a nationwide grassroots network of people who love their hometowns. Durable policy is the result of people like them, not the other way around. Policy may come from Capitol Hill, but the conservationists who write it are made outdoors. The problem is, we are making fewer of them every year.
A <a href="https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/162385/cdc_162385_DS1.pdf">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of 2021 survey data</a> showed that nearly four in 10 kids aged 3 to 5 get an hour or less outside on a weekday. Fewer than half get three or more hours on any given Saturday or Sunday. Screens are the easy answer. The bigger problem is that childhood is more structured than ever. As I wrote for the Institute for Family Studies, our children are being <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-free-range-childhood-is-key-to-civic-infrastructure">supervised, programmed, and scheduled nearly all of their waking hours</a>.
Their childhoods also lack the risk and independence that shaped previous generations. American parents know that if the helicopter parents don’t get you, the legal liability will. As <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/">The Atlantic</a> has documented, a preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence and risk-taking without making it safer. This culture of fear and risk aversion also extends to how we’re teaching kids about the natural world. Today’s climate curriculum leads with catastrophe and alarmism, so children learn to feel guilty about nature before they ever learn to like it.
I am raising my son to love nature the way I did as a child. No indoctrination necessary. He’ll be in good company: conservationists born and raised hunting, fishing, hiking, riding, and caring for the land. Affection cannot be assigned. When we indoctrinate a child into caring for the land instead of letting him find it himself, he becomes compliant. But conviction works better than compliance. The difference in mindset between “you bear responsibility for this land” and “you are part of a plague on the land” matters, and I know which I’d rather send my son into the world with.
Those with conviction care for the land in tangible ways. Last year alone, hunters and anglers put roughly <a href="https://www.nrahlf.org/articles/2025/3/20/hunter-backed-pittman-robertson-act-provides-13-billion-for-2025-conservation-funding/">$1.3 billion</a> into state wildlife conservation through Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson excise taxes. No one shamed them into it, but their idea of a good weekend is one spent in a stream or a tree stand, and they pay for the privilege through hunting tags and fishing licenses. An afternoon outside shows up as a funding stream.
None of this is complicated. It is a habit, and habits are set at home. 
The numbers are moving our way. Participation in outdoor recreation <a href="https://ncoae.org/blog/outdoor-recreation-participation-is-at-a-record-high-now-comes-the-real-work/">hit a record</a> last year, and youth participation rose 5.6 percent. That trend will become a fad if we fail to cement it. This is the responsibility of parents. Calvin doesn’t have the words to express his love of the outdoors yet. But each morning he grabs my hand and leads me to our back door, then looks up at me expectantly. Soon he will work the latch himself, and then it is out of my hands. I am not raising an activist. I am raising a boy who will notice when the creek runs low.
So here is my environmental agenda, and it will cost you an afternoon: Take a child outside this week. Do not actively teach him anything. Let him get muddy, and let him track it back into your kitchen.
The opening and closing of your screen door will do more for our future than any government program could.
***
Danielle Franz is the CEO of the American Conservation Coalition.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-2085807068

Why I Don’t Worry About My Kid’s Carbon Footprint

american conservation coalition

climate change education

conservation

opinion

outdoor recreation

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
The rise of Ozempic is as much a story of American ingenuity as it is of our culture’s posture toward its food. For every excess pound Americans gain, the pharmaceutical industry is just a few steps behind, developing band-aid after band-aid for our crisis of chronic disease. Yet while our alarm bells only recently began sounding over the obesity epidemic and its cascade of related health issues, the roots of our disordered relationship with food run decades deeper, back to the <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/political/convenience-culture-crisis-how-second-wave-feminism-helped-make-america-sick">second wave</a> of feminism and the rise of a convenience-driven culture that ushered in mass dependence on ultra-processed foods. This deeper crisis is not one we can medicate ourselves out of: We are a nation that has deliberately forgotten how to feed itself.
Feeding America well is less about nostalgia than stopping a tangible, observable public health and environmental crisis. By now, data regarding our obesity, hypertension, and related deaths, diseases, and disorders saturates popular discourse almost too deeply to bear repeating, but the fact that our poor health has become a cliché doesn’t make it any less true. Much of this crisis, unsurprisingly, begins in the kitchen. The “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/15/garden/new-lost-generation-the-cooking-illiterate.html">cooking illiterate</a>,” a term coined by the New York Times, is reproducing faster than ever, with younger generations decreasingly likely to know how to cook. <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/do-millennials-really-not-know-how-to-cook-with-technology-they-dont-really-have-to">More than a quarter of millennials</a> say they couldn’t make a cake from a box mix, and <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/do-millennials-really-not-know-how-to-cook-with-technology-they-dont-really-have-to">under a third of 18-to-29-year-olds</a> say they feel “confident” in the kitchen. It isn’t an issue of free time, either; <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/america-addicted-food-delivery-takeout-plastics-coronavirus_n_5ed013eec5b64f10cb090b29">the COVID-19 lockdowns led to a spike in DoorDash and Uber Eats</a>, not a renaissance of home cooking.
Our obsession with convenience culture is not a coincidence. Rather, it’s the direct result of devaluing work such as homemaking, caregiving, and food preparation, traditionally women’s work, as lesser forms of work. This shift then combined with rising dual-income households to create a cultural and logistical void in domestic food production as households’ mothers entered the workforce. Industrial food companies were all too quick to rush into that void, seeking markets for post-WWII manufacturing capacity. Corporate interests aligned all too conveniently with the “you can have it all” ethos, promoting shelf-stable, processed foods as “freedom” from and “progress” beyond the home. This cultural transformation was hardly intentional; in many ways, it was barely even a conscious one. Nevertheless, markets picked up on our demonstrated preferences, and our homemade food was replaced by manufactured supplements that quickly became substitutes.
Industry replaced the family kitchen, filling a vacuum with promises that were too good to be true. Additives and preservatives were marketed as “science,” frozen and boxed meals were sold as “liberation,” and the rise of the microwavable dinners framed speed as ingenuity. Generational skills eroded as cooking, gardening, and food knowledge were outsourced, and food quality plummeted as additives, preservatives, artificial ingredients, refined seed oils, and industrial-scale commodity crops became dietary staples. Systems once centered around nourishment came to serve America’s new favorite god: efficiency.
With our food sequestered away in boxes and plastic, cobwebs began to grow around tables where we soon forgot how to commune. Feeding ourselves became a necessary evil rather than an excuse to socialize, exacerbating <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16643">America’s declining social capital</a> along with its biomarkers. Rates of metabolic disease climbed along with the number of ingredients in our staple foods and our <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/youre-eating-out-of-season-and-its-costing-you-more-than-you-think">distance</a> — physical and cognitive — from our foods’ origins. Today, <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/children-struggle-to-name-common-vegetables-survey-shows-ctxv3z3kg?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqccnk_ELKc_OqByRR6uQ4YjzfobSGBhOu1floda0nEiqjZQMeW7GkMjReIAtDg%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6938c117&amp;gaa_sig=Y0jubow8RBDTeD5iIV-dOChvetUmJaIwJepvhCVvLAtwF0h5Ak-jYAqVLkYec1YGKuNXw48aCzhmDBdEbOSXjA%3D%3D">less than a third of children aged 7-11</a> can identify a beet or a zucchini, though few kids have the same struggle recognizing logos for McDonald’s or M&amp;M’s. The decline in familiarity with food may have begun with the decline in farming and cooking, but it has accelerated over just a few generations to a full-fledged outsourcing of our culinary and nutritional autonomy.
The consequences of our predicament are difficult to overstate. Our country is now unsuccessfully battling parallel rises in childhood chronic disease, allergies, autoimmune disorders, and metabolic illness, and our decline in food literacy means that children who don’t know where food comes from can’t learn from their equally clueless parents. While the biotech industry may be able to patch up some of our health issues, it cannot heal a sick culture. Our loss of connection to food is also an atrophy of cultural rituals, among them shared meals, family identity, and an intergenerational knowledge transfer we cannot rebuild with an injectable, pill, or patch. All of this is underscored by our deteriorating relationship with the land we call home, as industrial food production has increased our land degradation, reliance on synthetic inputs, and biodiversity loss, reinforcing a cycle where the cheapest calories are the least nutritious and most environmentally damaging.
Making America healthy again will require rewiring the broken systems that have made her sick. We need to fix the regulatory frameworks that make it easier to produce processed food at scale than to support small farms, diversified agriculture, or nutrient-rich perishables. We need to address the permitting barriers currently hindering regional food processing, regenerative farm expansion, and the infrastructure needed for local food systems. Most of all, we need to accept that a healthy America requires aligning food policy with human health and environmental integrity — not just agricultural output — and we need to write agricultural policy that reflects that. Ultimately, success would look like an inversion of the industrial food supply chain that prioritizes export capacity and shelf-stability over nutrient density and ecological health.
And yet policy alone cannot save us. The real work begins in the home, with the deeply pro-human and pro-family pursuits of reclaiming shared meals and rebuilding a relationship with what we eat. Promoting food literacy, normalizing cooking as a basic life skill, and restoring the dignity of the farm and the kitchen are all efforts that will need to begin from the ground up, not an executive order or a farm bill. Restoring agency over the food that sustains our bodies and communities is a project that will take several generations and, if we’re successful, save several more.
America cannot be healthy again until families, communities, and institutions reclaim the ability to produce, prepare, and understand real food. We’re mistaken to believe that the fallout we’re enduring is merely biological, and equally mistaken to believe its solutions are merely political. Our country’s health is a project capable of nourishing a nation starving socially, culturally, and environmentally, if we choose to pursue it. Restoring it promises both the work and the reward of a lifetime.
***
Danielle Butcher Franz is CEO of the American Conservation Coalition. As a founding member of ACC, Danielle has dedicated her career to building bridges between traditional conservative values and environmental advocacy.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

GettyImages-1974650688

The Weight Loss Shot Is Rising, But What Happened To The American Family Table?

feminism

food

upstream

In some ways, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is to the Democratic party what candidate Trump was to the Republican Party in 2016. Both President Trump and Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) appeal to their base for their refusal to conform to political norms, and anyone with an ounce of objectivity can see the appeal in the newly elected congresswoman: She is a bright and articulate young woman who is clearly driven and passionate about politics. She is inclusive, goes after bold new ideas, and isn’t afraid to diverge from the establishment of her party. AOC’s unconventional approach has allowed her to quickly push her agenda to the forefront, the pinnacle of which seems to be an environmental and economic stimulus package known as the Green New Deal.
AOC refuses to settle for the status quo and is refreshingly transparent for someone whose chosen career path is within the political realm. Her youth, coupled with her energetic approach, shines through as quite authentic. Ocasio-Cortez provides a peek at what the Democratic Party can hope to be in the future, and by all accounts, she is a rising star, especially as the millennial generation begins to establish their political influence. Her rising profile is heightened by her Green New Deal advocacy.
Ocasio-Cortez’s charisma has garnered her much popularity and attention, awarding her a platform that is unusually large for someone with such little experience in Washington. After all, Washington is well known as a city in which you must “pay your dues” before amassing any sort of political capital. Still,
In a <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729033/Green-New-Deal-FINAL.pdf">resolution</a> introduced Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez’s plan can more accurately be categorized as an outline. One highlight boasts that ten years from &#8220;the start of execution of the plan,&#8221; the country will be 100% dependent on renewable energy sources — namely wind and solar. Despite the promising advances these technologies have made in recent years, they are still not prepared to solely bear the responsibility of America’s power grid. While it is difficult to estimate the price of this transition over ten years, a 2010 Heritage Foundation <a href="https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/renewable-electricity-standard-what-it-will-really-cost-americans">study</a> noted that a transition to 100% renewable energy would likely cost $5.2 trillion over two decades; and it neglects to include the full variety of other clean energy sources, including hydro and nuclear, that we could use. Make no mistake, solar energy in particular has potential, but it is not yet at a point where it can meet our energy needs both cost effectively and reliably.
This plan omits other important clean energy sources that are capable of supplying power on a larger scale, as opposed to the (currently) intermittent energy we receive from wind and solar. Aside from that, in order to appropriately scale up renewable energies to match our consumption needs, the United States would need to immediately produce more windmills and solar panels, both of which have a high <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/">carbon cost</a> during production. The unspoken and unintended consequence is a drastic increase in carbon emissions that, even if temporary, is counterintuitive to helping the environment.
Another standout in the Green New Deal is the section that indicates a mandate <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jxUzp9SZ6-VB-4wSm8sselVMsqWZrSrYpYC9slHKLzo/edit">requiring</a> an upgrade of &#8220;every residential and industrial building&#8221; for &#8220;state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort, and safety.&#8221; This proposal seems not only wholly unrealistic but absolutely irresponsible. The cost of such a requirement is far above what most middle and low-income families can afford. While Representative Ocasio-Cortez claims to be fighting for marginalized communities and low-income families, her proposed policies will hurt them the most.
In 2016 alone, the United States distributed over <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/02/21/federal-funding-for-low-income-energy-assistance-highest-in-new-england-upper-midwest">$3.3 billion</a> in energy assistance programs. These costs are based on energy readily available to low-income households, primarily oil and coal. Removing these cost-efficient alternatives to renewable energy ensures that prices will increase; and as the inescapable cost of energy rises, one can only begin to wonder how lower to middle-class families will be able to not only keep up with the additional energy costs but also afford new home energy systems as appears to be mandated in the GND.
In terms of stimulating the economy, this resolution is sure to recognize promising a &#8220;&#8216;just transition&#8217; for all workers, low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, rural and urban communities and the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution, and other environmental harm.&#8221; Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of how workers in traditional energy fields will transition after they lose their jobs due to the government’s interference in the energy market.
Lastly, Ocasio-Cortez seems proud to tout that her grand plans to introduce a marginal tax rate where the nation’s wealthiest citizens will be subject to rates as high as 70%. She wasted no time during her recent 60 minutes interview with Anderson Cooper to proclaim that it is time the wealthiest citizens begin &#8220;paying their fair share in taxes.&#8221; Little context is provided in terms of exactly who qualifies as America’s &#8220;wealthiest,&#8221; or at what income level the 70% rate would take effect. However, as noted by the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/05/ocasio-cortez-wants-higher-taxes-very-rich-americans-heres-how-much-money-could-that-raise/?noredirect=on&amp;utm_term=.c3ea74454ede">Washington Post</a>, if one is to assume, as the Congresswoman previously mentioned, that the bar is set at households pulling in upwards of $10 million annually, the 70% marginal tax rate will only affect .5% of American households. These 16,000-or-so tax filers earning above $10 million annually constitute the upper half of the 1% so often cited by the Left when it comes to increasing tax revenue for new programs such as Medicare for all and free college tuition. What many on the Left fail to recall is that raising taxes does not necessarily cause increased tax revenue, as evidenced by President Carter generating only <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762">52%</a> of the tax revenue that President Reagan was able to in his last year.
All of this only reiterates that the Green New Deal still has no real policy behind it. It is a non-binding, shell of a proposal whose only purpose as of now is to virtue-signal environmental policies that are unproven to have any positive effect on the environment, while collecting more taxes from the upper class and further dividing the middle and lower classes. This is precisely the reason President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords — it is not morally right to spend taxpayer money on goals that have no follow-through and are ineffective for the environment.
All in all, the Green New Deal is not politically viable. It is a brilliant P.R. stunt, lacking in substance but appearing to give the progressive base everything they could want. When it inevitably goes nowhere, it will be all too easy to blame Republicans for lack of cooperation. While AOC’s heart and intentions may be in the right place, her policy misses the mark. Were she not so intent on making a splash, perhaps the newly elected representative would schedule meetings with those who may not agree with her politically but share her concern for environmental and social justice. While she may embrace being called a radical, her radical policies will be poorly received by both those in office and every-day Americans.
The environment is a subject which should never have been made partisan. Reaching across the aisle and finding solutions that sit well with both sides is not only crucial — it is entirely realistic. One example is the House of Representatives’ bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which I would strongly encourage AOC to join. I am confident she will find several elected officials eager to work with her on bipartisan alternatives, including an idea like <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/republican-introduces-technology-neutral-tax-credit-bill-to-boost-energy/543443/">energy innovation tax credits</a>, which reward market-driven innovation and encourage the development of cutting-edge technologies, such as battery storage. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of sustainably shifting our energy portfolio to renewables.
Should Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Democratic colleagues decide to take the environment seriously and seek substantial action on climate, conservation, and energy, I encourage them to sit down with their Republican counterparts and find a compromise that is in the best interest of all Americans.

Menu

Danielle Franz

A New Family Feud Has Grandparents And Parents At Each Other’s Throats

Why I Don’t Worry About My Kid’s Carbon Footprint

The Weight Loss Shot Is Rising, But What Happened To The American Family Table?

BUTCHER: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is All Talk On The Environment