AOC: Climate Change not an "Elitist Issue"

"This is not an elitist issue. This is a quality of life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist. Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families and Flint whose kids have, their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives, called them elitist. Tell. You’re telling them that those kids are trying to get on a plane to Davos. People are dying, they are dying, and the response across the other side of the aisle is to introduce an amendment five minutes before a hearing and a markup.

This is serious. This should not be a partisan issue. This is about our constituents and all of our lives. Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths, swats of the Midwest are drowning right now. Underwater farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back. And we’re here. And people are more concerned about helping oil companies and helping their own families. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. This is about our lives. This is about American lives and it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan. We are facing a national crisis and if we do not ascend to that crisis, if we do not ascend to the, to the levels in which we were threatened at the Great Depression when we were threatened in World War II, if we do not ascend to those levels, if we tell the American public that we are more willing to invest and bail out big banks than we are willing to invest in our farmers and our urban families, then I don’t know what we’re here doing. I don’t know what we’re here doing."