Oh my, now the real scarefest begins.

“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'" Ocasio-Cortez said.

No it won't.

No you can't "address" so-called "climate change."

The reason has nothing to do with the United States.  We could literally cut carbon emissions to zero and it would not matter one bit.

Leaving aside the fact that the scaremongering nonsense won't happen anyway, because the so-called "CO2 models" are wrong (and now are known wrong as the predicted climate delta for the actual realized CO2 change has not taken place) the fact remains that the United States is not where the CO2 emissions are growing -- and it has nothing to do with people being "greener" either.

It simply has to do with efficiency.  LED lamps are more efficient than either CFL or (by a lot) incandescent.  LED lamps are now reasonably priced, which means people choose them because on a dollars-spent basis they last longer for less money spent, not on energy consumption.  But they win twice -- first in the amount of power required, and second in the summer by the amount of heat your A/C system doesn't have to remove.

Computers are more-efficient -- CPU power consumption has gone down quite a bit and SSDs are far more power stingy than spinning rust (while being a lot faster.)  Again you win twice; you pay less to run the computer and in the summer you don't pay as much again to remove the heat from the computer room or your house.

Cars tend to get better fuel economy.  Fewer gallons of fuel consumed per mile means less CO2.

On the other hand the vast majority of the people on the planet are still pre-industrial or meta-industrial societies.  Think Africa, India and to a degree China.  The former two have growing populations.  They will not agree to live in straw huts and cannot afford double the cost for "green" anything.  They won't do it, period.

Therefore if Occasional Kotex was right she'd have to argue for a war that would kill somewhere around two billion people.

That is what she's advocating, in truth.

She won't admit it but that's what her "green new deal" would have to do in order to actually reduce CO2.

Math is a pesky thing -- it's not political and doesn't give a damn if you like it or not.  It just is.

In any event as I "enjoy" 20 below average temperatures these last few days in a part of the country, with more blasts of this coming, I for one am all for a bit of warming.  But that's weather, not climate.

Never mind that more CO2 means faster plant growth which is a good thing -- unless you intend to start murdering people or cutting off (or out) their genitalia.  I will remind you that the low-education, low-skill but highly-motivated hordes really like procreating at far beyond replacement level, which is why people are becoming quite alarmed at the carrying capacity (in terms of food production) of this rock.  Higher CO2 levels are beneficial to being able to feed all those new people, and again, unless you intend to start mass-murdering a literal couple of billion humans you had better come up with something that doesn't involve force to feed them all.

Of course CNN is running the "force" view -- all plants, almost no animals to eat, etc.  They of course cite "scientists" who "endorse" the idea of coercion to achieve this -- aimed at places like the United States, of course.

That young people cheer celebrities is nothing new but it requires zero thought to achieve that.  But since Occasional Kotex has exactly zero mathematical support for her impossible-to-achieve "goals" even if she bankrupted the entire United States population attempting it I'm not all that worried in terms of outcome.

But she, and those cheering her on, ought to be worried -- because when the coercion really gets going and the guns come out she and others will have to face the reality that history has taught us again and again that once you pull a gun, unlike at a shooting range, the bullets can fly in all directions and it matters not whether you're allegedly in a "privileged" class either since those who you would call to "protect" you must be paid, they will have been equally impoverished along with everyone else, and as a result you can't be certain in which direction their guns will be pointing.

It would be incredibly unwise to tell 2 billion+ humans on this planet to both stop having babies and commit suicide.  Their response to such a demand is likely to be far less peaceful than people like Occasional Kotex would expect.