The Millennial Era of Climate Politics Has Arrived
Long ago, in a distant geological era—when Donald Trump hosted a reality show, when Senator Barack Obama doubted whether Hillary Clinton could be president, when the Earth was one-third of a degree Celsius cooler—Al Gore made a prediction.
When Americans understood what climate change would mean for their children and grandchildren, the former vice president warned, “they will demand that whoever is running for office, whoever is elected to serve, will have to respond.”
For 12 years, politicians did not, and now Americans’ “children” have themselves been elected to serve. When Gore made that remark, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a teenager, a legal minor, one of a million kids living in New York.
Now she is an influential member of Congress.
On Thursday, Representative Ocasio-Cortez
