Democrats panicked initially after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said a vote would be held on the ambitious but reckless Green New Deal proposed by left-wing senators.
But now, the Left reportedly thinks it can troll back.
In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Greg Sargent reports that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is planning to give a floor speech on Thursday that will pit Democrats and their climate crisis claims against Republicans’ refusal to uproot the economy for what will amount to a negligent effect on the climate.
“I challenge Leader McConnell to say that climate change is real, that it’s caused by humans, and that Congress needs to act,” Schumer will say, according to Sargent. “This is what two-thirds of the American people agree with. Two-thirds.”
Schumer will also point out that since Republicans took over the senate in 2014, “there has not been a single Republican bill to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions on the floor of the Senate.”
Further, Schumer will hammer Republicans for not working on the issue, which he and Democrats say is one of the top threats facing our planet.
“We’re supposed to conduct the business of the nation,” Schumer is expected to say. “We’re supposed to tackle our country’s greatest challenges. Climate change is probably the number one threat to the planet. And yet not a single Republican bill that addresses climate change in a meaningful way. Not one.”
Will it work?
We’re told that if we don’t act dramatically now, there will be catastrophic consequences very soon, yet the most vocal proponents of such action continue to fly on private jets around the world and have made none of the drastic changes in their lives they claim need to be made.
We’re also called deniers if we don’t believe we need to immediately stop using fossil fuels and live in huts to save the planet. There are many Americans who believe the climate is changing, but aren’t convinced human beings have as much of an effect as reports indicate.
“Schumer intends this floor speech, which will also list out numerous examples of the GOP refusal to act, as an opening shot in a series of efforts by Democrats to highlight Republican climate denialism, which variously concerns the science, the scale of the problem, and the need for legislative action against it,” Sargent wrote.
Democrats will continue to keep up the pressure on Republicans with more floor speeches and through a coordinated messaging campaign on social media.
The Green New Deal has already been roundly mocked after an initial FAQ for the resolution said we should provide a universal income for people who are “unwilling” to work. Democrats might try to put Republicans on defense by pointing out the GOP doesn’t produce legislation to fight climate change, but they’ll have a hard time convincing anyone to pay a lot more money for less reliable energy forms in their current state.