AOC calls out climate change deniers using video of storm-flooded NYC subway

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last week clapped back at opponents of her Green New Deal climate proposal using videos of New Yorkers wading through waist-high water at subway stations across the city. As the fast-moving Tropical Storm Elsa lashed New York City and New Jersey with heavy rain and high winds, social media was bombarded with harrowing images and videos of flooded streets and underground subway stations. Using the opportunity to once again call attention to the immediate need for action, the congressperson tweeted a few choice words for those who are against her legislation to combat the climate crisis.

"The Green New Deal, which is a blueprint to create millions of good jobs rebuilding infrastructure to stem climate change & protect vulnerable communities, is unrealistic," Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted in quotations, sharing a video of a woman stumbling through waist-deep water as she attempted to reach the platform at a train station. "Instead we will do the adult thing, which is take orders from fossil fuel execs & make you swim to work." According to Business Insider, AOC may have been referencing a secretive video recording that was made public last month, in which a senior Exxon lobbyist said the energy giant had fought climate science through "shadow groups" and had targeted influential senators in an effort to weaken President Biden's climate agenda.

She also posted another tweet in which she used a video of the Major Deegan Expressway in New York City underwater to call out her colleagues for their opposition to abolishing the filibuster. "I'm so glad the filibuster is here to fix this oh wait," AOC sarcastically tweeted. The threat of a filibuster, one of the key mechanisms used by GOP politicians to hobble progressive legislation on all sorts of issues, currently looms over Biden's infrastructure deal which incorporates initiatives focused on combatting the climate crisis.

Ocasio-Cortez took aim at her colleagues who are resistant to addressing the climate crisis last week too when she pointed to a shocking video of the Gulf of Mexico on fire after an oil pipeline rupture as evidence of a need to fund the Green New Deal. "Shout out to all the legislators going out on dinner dates with Exxon lobbyists so they can say a Green New Deal is too expensive," she tweeted with a thumbs-up emoji. Many on Twitter applauded the 31-year-old's efforts to call out politicians' indifference to the ravages of climate change.

"It's insanity that old people who won't be around when climate change is ravaging humanity get to deny swift action on addressing it," @musicquestmike replied to AOC's tweet. "Capitalism has [zero] built-in mechanism to consider anything besides immediate profit. Within the logic of capitalism, it is more efficient to have workers wade through hip-high pools of human feces than to correct for climate change," wrote @bezosstompsdogs. "Well of course, [AOC]. Why would they want to do anything but line their pockets with coal executive money? I mean, when the rest of the world is drowning and/or on fire, they'll have their golden parachutes to keep them safe," tweeted @PrinceOfAtheism.