Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Asks Whether It's 'OK' To Have Kids Given Climate Change

In it, she said that the perils ahead "lead young people to have a legitimate question...is it OK to still have children?"

After all, tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt doesn't often leave people in the kind of financial position where starting a family seems like a responsible decision.

As she put it, "There's scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult."

But of course, there was more going on in this video than just bumming people out about the prospect of having kids.

She said, "This idea that 'I've been working on this for X amount of years', it's like, not good enough. We need a universal sense of urgency."

That statement may sound a little obscure in and of itself, but it becomes clearer if you heard about a recent meeting between young activists and Senator Diane Feinstein.

However, the response they received wasn't particularly encouraging.

As The New Yorker reported, Feinstein said, "You know what’s interesting about this group? I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that."

According to NPR, it's a nonbinding resolution that's supposed to revolutionize how the government deals with climate change with a large emphasis on drastic measures undertaken quickly.

For instance, it seeks to upgrade all buildings in the country for energy efficiency, work with farmers to eliminate as much pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as possible while promoting "universal access to healthy food," and overhauling all of the nation's transportation systems to reduce emissions.

As NPR reported, it also seeks to provide every American with a guaranteed job "with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security."

It also calls for high quality healthcare for all Americans. In line with the aggressive action that much of the climate science community agrees is necessary for fighting climate change, this is all supposed to happen within 10 years.

According to NPR, if a nonbinding resolution passes, it means that Congress is agreeing that what is laid out in the Green New Deal should be done in the time allotted.

Not only would some politicians balk at the idea that this can be accomplished in 10 years, but even if everyone in the House and the Senate agreed with everything laid out in it (a massive "if"), there's also the possibility that it could cost trillions of dollars to implement.

Even if absolutely everyone in the Democratic Party threw their support behind it, which doesn't seem like it's going to happen, it has little chance of getting anywhere in the Republican-dominated senate.

As Ocasio-Coretz told NPR, the Green New Deal's job isn't to attract the hearts of Congress, but voters. The more the policies contained in it excite the public, the more likely they are to pressure politicians about it, which could get the more savvy ones to see which way the wind is blowing.

As she said, "Where I do have trust is in my colleagues' capacity to change and evolve and be adaptable and listen to their constituents."

h/t: NPR