AOC sends a stark climate message from the future

The 2020s, just right around the corner, promise to be a critical decade.

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intends the 2020s to be the decade that the United States tackles climate change by reinventing our society's antiquated energy infrastructure, while also guaranteeing Americans livable, dignified incomes. It's similar to the historic New Deal advanced by FDR in the 1930s.

It's the Green New Deal.

In a seven and a half minute message sent from some 10 years in the future, AOC narrates a history beginning in the 1970s when scientists began to warn about the growing reality of climate change. Accumulating carbon emissions in the atmosphere had started to warm and destabalize Earth's moderate climate.

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez then speaks about a speculative future where the U.S. has dramatically slashed its carbon emissions. In the video produced by The Intercept, she muses about riding a bullet train between New York City and Washinton D.C. It begins with climate-savvy Democrats taking leadership of the House of Representatives in 2018 (which did, actually, happen), followed by the election of a Democratic president in 2020. This would set the stage for the "Decade of the Green New Deal."

AOC described it as "a flurry of legislation that kicked off our social and ecological transformation to save the planet."

"It was the kind of swing-for-the-fences ambition we needed," she added.

The Green New Deal -- which currently exists as a visionary framework in Congress, known as a resolution -- is way to kickstart the nation's decarbonization process. The goal of 2020s federal legislation would be to slash the nation's carbon emissions by half during that decade. This means ramping up renewable energy (wind, solar, and battery storage) while phasing out fossil fuels in the power, transportation, and industrial sectors.

The emerging Green New Deal is still intentionally short on specific policies -- in the same way that FDR's New Deal largely left openings for lawmakers to solve the damages wrought by The Great Depression. The legislation would have to be discussed, debated, and developed by a motivated Congress.

This conversation could certainly use a boost. A few weeks ago the Republican-controlled Senate declined to debate the resolution, after a Republican senator used a drawing of a machine gun-wielding Ronald Reagan riding a dinosaur to mock the idea of a New Green Deal.

AOC's message is that the Green New Deal, like its 1930s predecessor, will give future Americans a prosperous life, with limited extremes in devastating drought and pummeling storms.

Can it follow in the historic footsteps of the first New Deal? That's up to the politicians in charge -- and the voters who grant them that power.

"We can be whatever we have the courage to see," AOC concluded.