Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets biblical on Sarah Huckabee Sanders

The White House doesn’t want to be held responsible for acting on climate change

Published January 29, 2019 4:00AM (EST)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AP/Jae C. Hong)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AP/Jae C. Hong)

This post originally appeared on Grist.

It’s as official as it ever was: The White House doesn’t want to be held responsible for acting on climate change.

In an interview on Fox News Tuesday night, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s urgent calls to action on climate change: “Look, I don’t think we’re going to listen to her on much of anything, particularly not on matters we’re gonna leave in the hands of a much, much higher authority, and certainly not listen to the freshman congresswoman on when the world may end.”

This came in response to an interview Cortez did on Monday with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, during which she emphasized the 12-year deadline to slash carbon emissions enough to avoid the worst ravages of climate change. She told Coates that young people are looking for bold moves on climate change, and condemned the “abdication of responsibility” by those currently in power.

In the third round on Wednesday, Cortez turned to the bible in a Twitter thread.

Others, like climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe, quickly chimed in.

The congresswoman summed it up by saying: “You shouldn’t need a Bible to tell you to protect our planet, but it does anyway.”


By Claire Elise Thompson