Washington, DC — Today, Senator Mitch McConnell called for a floor debate on the Green New Deal resolution introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. The debate was the first Senate floor debate of climate change in years. 350 Action Executive Director May Boeve gave the following statement in response:

“Four years after a snowball was brought to the Capitol building to ‘counter’ the existence of climate change, and yet here we are watching laughable arguments once again. Let’s be clear that pitting climate denial political theater against scientific facts is not a debate. Republicans have shown once again that they’re not interested in a real discussion about the Green New Deal.

“The climate deniers in Congress are propping up their fossil fuel executive friends and taking aim at the only proposal for a serious response to this crisis: the Green New Deal. Our communities deserve an effective debate on plans to address climate change, not a ploy to stifle solutions in service of politics. With the window for action to curb disastrous impacts from climate change closing, we need policies that kick off a just transition from fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy now.”

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Contact: Dani Heffernan, 350 Action, [email protected], +1 (305) 992-1544