Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) took a shot at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) signature Green New Deal proposal on Sunday, joking that the self-proclaimed “radical” congresswoman “gives us the best things to talk about.”
“There’s a saying we have in the military, it’s ‘work smarter not harder.’ That would have been some good advice on the Green New Deal,” Crenshaw told conservative commentator Candace Owens during an appearance on her podcast.
“We actually all care about the environment, and most people believe in climate change and believe that mankind has something to do with that — how much is scientifically debatable, but there is some effect and we all have an interest in reducing carbon emissions, just having cleaner air, cleaner oceans. It’s something we can get behind,” he continued. “Young people especially — conservatives and liberals alike really want to hear that message.”
While Democrats have largely rallied in support of the Green New Deal, it has proven to be a wedge issue among voters due to its radical policy prescriptions. With a goal of moving toward net zero emissions over a 10-year period, the proposal calls to “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, [and] build out high-speed rail at scale where air travel stops becoming necessary,” according to the now-deleted section of Ocasio-Cortez’s website.
The expansive climate and economic justice package, however, has faced massive scrutiny and mockery for prescribing unrealistic and vastly burdensome requirements such as the banning of cow farts, the gutting and rebuilding of every building in the country, eliminating 99% of cars, and providing every American a house, a job, an education, and even free money. The Green New Deal notably failed to receive a single vote in the Senate when it was brought to the floor.
“The Green New Deal fundamentally destroys our economy and does a lot of other weird stuff, too,” Crenshaw said. “Basically it’s just a wish list of socialist utopias, as was admitted by [Ocasio-Cortez’s former Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti]. But fundamentally, it is a dogmatic approach to environmentalism, which is solar and wind.”
“Everything has to be solar and wind, there can’t be anything else, including nuclear,” Crenshaw continued. “When you start banning nuclear, that’s how you know they’re not serious about climate change.”
The Texas congressman noted that despite the absurdity of the Green New Deal, Republicans still have a duty to propose a response.
“Our approach has to be a common sense approach,” Crenshaw said. “It has to be developing newer, cleaner technology that helps our economy and also helps the world. This is the way that I like to phrase it: we want to focus on 100% of the problem, and you can only focus on 100% of global emissions if you have technology that is exportable, clean, reliable, and cheap.”
“If you want to just focus on 15% of the problem, which is what the U.S. emits as far as a global share of carbon emissions, then yeah, destroy our economy,” he continued. “Destroy our economy and you’ll erase 15% of emissions and guess what? You’ll do nothing.”