Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the headline speaker at the recent climate march in New York. This was a very poor choice by the organizers. The Democratic Party has made it clear by their actions that they do not support climate action and AOC is fully entrenched in the Democratic Party.
The recent climate march saw a meager 75,000 people attend and its impact was severely blunted by their choice of speakers and message. While there is no way to stop pro-Ukrainian groups like Razom from attending, the organizers could have prevented Democrats like AOC and Jamaal Bowman from being their keynote speakers. The focus of the climate march was to convince President Biden to do something about it. As the AP reported, “And they aimed their wrath directly at U.S. President Joe Biden, urging him to stop approving new oil and gas projects, phase out current ones and declare a climate emergency with larger executive powers.”
“We have people all across the world in the streets, showing up, demanding a cessation of what is killing us,” Ocasio-Cortez told a cheering crowd. “We have to send a message that some of us are going to be living on, on this planet 30, 40, 50 years from now. And we will not take no for an answer.”
It is correct that Biden has done nothing but exacerbate the crisis, but this message is lost when the keynote speaker already endorsed Biden. On the Pod Save America Podcast in July, AOC said of President Biden, “I think he’s done quite well, given the limitations that we have.” And when asked if she would support him, she said, “I believe, given that field, yes.”
President Biden has been quite possibly the worst president for climate change. His signature climate bill, The Inflation Reduction Act, contained poison pills designed to open huge amounts of public land to oil and gas drilling.
“This is a climate suicide pact,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s self-defeating to handcuff renewable energy development to massive new oil and gas extraction. The new leasing required in this bill will fan the flames of the climate disasters torching our country, and it’s a slap in the face to the communities fighting to protect themselves from filthy fossil fuels.”
President Biden has approved the Willow Project, the Alaska LNG project, Enbridge Line 3, and fast tracked the Mountain Valley Pipeline. He has overseen the largest military budget in history with the US military being the world’s largest single polluter. He has approved more oil and gas drilling permits than even Trump did. And this is who AOC and Bernie Sanders have endorsed for president. There will be no Green New Deal under a Biden presidency. As he said at the presidential debate on September 29, 2020:
Biden has always chosen the fossil fuel companies and AOC has chosen Biden. After choosing Biden, AOC should be laughed off the stage at any climate event. She should be ashamed to show her face. Instead, she headlined the climate march. This made the event a joke in the eyes of many. We need to be drawing attention to the capitalism induced climate disaster, but this is not the way to do it. Democrats are aiding and abetting the fossil fuel companies in the destruction of the planet. Coal baron Joe Manchin remains chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
If any progress on climate is to be made, the climate movement must leave the Democratic Party in the museum of antiquities where it belongs. A capitalist party will never save us from climate disaster.
When I read that AOC had been invited to speak I felt and thought the same things the author did. My first reaction was also that it was, strategically, a bad decision.
AOC has made no bones of her fealty to the Democratic elites. The organizers further harm the movement when they make it a partisan issue- especially when the Dems are NOT going to budge. AOC herself carries absolutely ZERO weight in the Party;. In fact, the Party elites will go out of their way to ensure their patrons that such is the case; while any possibly otherwise open-minded Repubs will also be summarily put off by the partisanship; so basically the naive organizers just shot themselves in the foot- weakening instead of amplifying their message. This is IMO inexcusable.
AOC is the perfect example of a Democrat--say one thing to get elected, do the opposite to serve your real constituency--corporations. But we're not supposed to care or even notice, no matter how heinous their actions, because at least they're not Republicans!) I agree, this was a terrible decision on the part of the organizers.