Green New Deal for Public Schools

Floor Speech

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Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Madam Speaker, it is such an honor to be here just over 2 years after we introduced the original Green New Deal resolution, which has now inspired a great deal of similar resolutions and Green New Deal resolutions adopted and introduced into municipalities and States across the country.

Not only have similar resolutions been introduced, but we also have seen inspiration for other forms of Green New Deal legislation, like the Green New Deal for Public Housing, the Green New Deal for Public Schools, and beyond.

But I think one thing that is very important for us to discuss is a very urgent matter, which is the infrastructure package that is right here before Congress that is being negotiated by both the House and the Senate.

While I certainly wish sometimes that our legislation was informed primarily by the legislators that are here writing this legislation, by communities that are impacted by this legislation, it goes without saying that there is a great deal of dark money involved in the fight on climate change, and that dark money is intended for us to not act in this situation.

We have lobbyists from companies like ExxonMobil bragging about their role in shaping our Federal legislation and curtailing our ambitions and in fighting against key provisions to draw down our carbon emissions.

Whenever I see something like this, whenever I see how dark money and lobbyists act as a wedge and a cudgel between elected officials and public servants and the people that we are supposed to represent, not only do I think it is heartbreaking, but it is very much tragic.

There is a key issue that we have here in acting on climate, and the big part of that issue is something that we call kind of a principal- agent problem where the people in charge of making decisions are simply not aligned and not incentivized to make the right ones because they are not feeling the impact of it.

I get concerned when we have conversations that the politics of the day get involved and intercede, and they complicate the policy for a generation. It is so critically important because I can't help but imagine that so many of the people that are in charge of blocking action on climate will not see the world that they are leaving to generations to come.

We have a moral responsibility to leave this world better than we found it. This is not about theory anymore. This is not about challenging the science anymore.

In New York City just yesterday, people woke up having a harder time breathing and having a harder time seeing the horizon because of the smoke from the Bootleg fires out in Oregon coming out to our city.

Wildfires will come and impact all of us. Floods and waters will come to impact all of us. But they will not impact all of us equally. The most vulnerable communities will be left behind, and we can stop it.

It doesn't have to be this way. Not only can we stop it, and not only can we draw down our emissions, but we can create millions of jobs doing so--millions of good union jobs.

We can create a civilian climate corps. We can transition to renewable energy. We can build infrastructure that all people can enjoy that is not just attuned to the wealthy. We can restore our land. We can live in harmony with an economy where we can care for one another instead of extracting off of each other.

We can build this world, and this world is close. It is so close. It is so close. That is why we see dark money mobilizing the way that it is right now, because they know that we can win.

Hopefully, in this package, we will continue to win. But this fight does not stop now. It does not stop with this infrastructure package. It will not stop, frankly, throughout the course of our lives because we have a responsibility to leave this world a better place for ourselves and our children.

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