Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocked for linking racism to climate change

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has declared that renewable energy can be the “vehicle” to ending racism. And Twitter is not totally on board.

The congresswoman-elect joined Sen. Bernie Sanders at his Solving Our Climate Crisis Town Hall on Monday, and she spoke passionately about the benefits of renewable energy.

“It’s not just possible that we will create jobs and economic activity by transitioning to renewable energy,” she said, “but it’s inevitable that we are going to create jobs, it’s inevitable that we are going to create industry, and it’s inevitable that we can use the transition to 100 percent renewable as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social and racial justice in the United States.” A video of this declaration has made its way to Twitter, and users can’t help but comment on the connection she’s made.

Many are mocking her connection between racism and climate change by coming up with their own versions.

There are some who supported her belief, though.

Sanders is certainly a supporter, as he often speaks about the connections between environmental inequality and racism. “People of color disproportionately experience a daily assault on their health and environment,” he writes in the racial justice section of his website. “Communities of color are the hardest hit by air and water pollution from industrial factories, power plants, incinerators, chemical waste and lead contamination from old pipes and paint. At the same time, they lack access to parks, gardens and other recreational green space.”

Also during the Solving Our Climate Crisis Town Hall, Ocasio-Cortez compared the progressive “Green New Deal” to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic New Deal of the 1930s, when American was in the midst of the Great Depression and the world was on the brink of war.

“No one would have thought that a nation so poor, so scarce and in such dire straits as we were in that time could pursue such a bold economy agenda, but we chose to anyway. We had the courage to do it anyway,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That is what this moment demands of us right now.” The fight for this will be akin to the civil rights movement, in her mind. “This is going to be the Great Society, the moon shot, the civil rights movement of our generation. That is the scale. That is the scale of the ambition that this movement is going to require.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will pay interns after calling out ‘unjust’ free internships: ‘Time to walk the walk’

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responds to Mike Huckabee’s criticism: ‘Leave the false statements to Sarah Huckabee’

• How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turns clothing critiques into teaching moments: ‘Get used to me slaying lewks’

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