Bernie Declares Climate Change a Global Emergency: ‘We Have All of 12 Years’

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Hannah Knudsen

Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) declared climate change not only a “national emergency” but a “global emergency” in a video posted to Twitter Tuesday, warning that the U.S. has just 12 years to take necessary steps or face “irreparable damage.”

“This morning I introduced legislation in the Senate declaring that climate change is a national emergency,” Sanders said in the video.

However, that does not go far enough. Sanders said climate change is also a “global emergency.” Anyone who denies this “really does not understand what’s going on,” Sanders declared before citing the “12 years” deadline made famous by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who likened the “crisis” to World War II.

During a January interview, Ocasio-Cortez said:

I think that the part of it that is generational is that millennials and Gen-Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we’re like, ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,’ and your biggest issue is–your biggest issue is, ‘How are we going to pay for it?’ And, like, this is the war; this is our World War II.

What the scientific community, Sanders continued, has “told us is that we have all of 12 years to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy or there will be irreparable damage done to this planet.”
He continued:
Our job right now is to have the courage to take on the fossil fuel industry who make billions and billions of dollars every single year destroying our planet, to take them on and in fact to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
“This is a national emergency. The future of the planet is hanging on our decision about moving forward,” he added:

Sanders – along with Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) – introduced a resolution to encourage Congress to recognize climate change as a “national emergency.” Proponents, such as Sanders, often use the supposed “scientific consensus” to push their radical views. However, no consensus actually exists.

As Breitbart News reported:

All of that comes in spite of the fact that there is no final consensus on anthropogenic climate change. The original paper progressives consistently cite  – written by Australian global warming activist John Cook – has been revealed to carry many red flags. Prior to writing the paper, Cook admitted his bias, noting his effort to establish a “strengthening consensus” on climate change.

The Daily Caller reported:

This is misleading, writes Andrew Montford of GWPF, since the methodology of Cook’s report reveals that the researchers cast such a wide net to create the 97 percent consensus that it encompasses people who don’t believe in catastrophic global warming.

To be part of the “consensus” one need only agree that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet “to some unspecified extent” — both of which are uncontroversial points.

There are other reasons to remain skeptical. As Breitbart News pointed out, “John Cook’s Internet home is an alarmist propaganda website called Skeptical Science.”

Sanders’ proposed resolution declares that “global warming caused by human activities, which increase emissions of greenhouse gases, has resulted in a climate emergency.” It also encourages Congress to express “that there is a climate emergency which demands a massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse, and address its consequences and causes.”

As American Energy Alliance President Tom Pyle pointed out, the resolution has no teeth.

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