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As top climate activists like Bill Gates shift their focus away from environmental activism, "Squad" Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is keeping silent on whether she still stands by her ten-year deadline for action laid out in the Green New Deal.
Back when Ocasio-Cortez first introduced the Green New Deal in the House of Representatives in 2019, she framed climate change as an existential threat that required a ten-year intensity of sweeping changes in U.S. energy policy.
The Green New Deal was introduced as a 10-year national mobilization plan to combat climate change and create jobs. In interviews explaining the proposal, Ocasio-Cortez cited a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicted the planet will reach the crucial threshold of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels by as early as 2030. This, she said, precipitated the risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages for hundreds of millions of people.
The proposal called for a rapid shift to renewable energy and major infrastructure changes, reducing fossil fuel usage, including coal, oil and natural gas.
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Facing criticism that the deal was economically unfeasible and even harmful, Ocasio-Cortez retorted that "millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up, and we're like: 'The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don't address climate change. And your biggest issue is, 'How are we going to pay for it?' Like, this is our World War II."
Six years later, Ocasio-Cortez has become one of the most widely recognized Democratic leaders and is even a rumored frontrunner for president in 2028.
Though her political fortunes have risen, Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to Fox News Digital's inquiry on whether she still believes the world is nearing its end.
Indeed, according to the World Meteorological Organization, the earth's average temperature already rose by 2.79 degrees in 2024, the warmest year ever recorded globally, without any apocalyptic outcomes as of yet.
Ocasio-Cortez has continued to advocate for climate-focused policies. On her official website, she touts her climate advocacy taking partial credit for the federal government making its "biggest ever investment in climate change - $369 billion to fight climate change, 9 million green jobs and net zero carbon emissions by 2030."
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Among those who have shifted their previous emphasis on climate change activism is long-time environmental philanthropist and billionaire Bill Gates.
In an essay published in October, Gates, who has long pushed for policies to limit the rise in temperatures, said resources should be diverted to improve life in warming parts of the world and improving the lives of people there.
"Climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems," Gates wrote. "We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause."
He noted that the global temperature doesn't give insight into the quality of people's lives.
"Although climate change will have serious consequences - particularly for people in the poorest countries - it will not lead to humanity's demise," the Microsoft co-founder wrote. "This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world's poorest countries."
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Gates hasn't abandoned the fight against climate change. He noted that every tenth of a degree of warming matters.
"Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people's lives," he wrote.
"Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare," he added.
In recent years, Gates has focused on the goals of his Gates Foundation, which has donated billions of dollars to fund health care, education and development initiatives worldwide.
