• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BREAKING: Federal Budget Pours Tens of Billions Into Clean Economy March 28, 2023
Somali Canadians Aid Drought-Stricken Homeland as 43,000 Reported Dead March 26, 2023
B.C.’s New Energy Framework a ‘Smokescreen,’ Critic Warns March 26, 2023
SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20 March 20, 2023
Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action March 20, 2023
Next
Prev

Dismissive Democrat: ‘Visibly Annoyed’ Feinstein Refuses to Support Green New Deal

February 25, 2019
Reading time: 3 minutes

United States Congress, US Senate Photo/Wikimedia Commons

United States Congress, US Senate Photo/Wikimedia Commons

1
SHARES
 

In a viral video released Friday that received nearly six million views by Saturday morning, veteran U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) faces down 15 middle and high school students from the San Francisco Bay area and pointedly refuses to support the Green New Deal.

“This is how @SenFeinstein reacted to children asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution—with smugness + disrespect,” the Sunrise movement tweeted in response. “This is a fight for our generation’s survival. Her reaction is why young people desperately want new leadership in Congress.”

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
Subscribe

“You know what’s interesting about this group is, I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing,” Feinstein said. “You come in here and say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that.”

Common Dreams calls the moment an “unbelievable exchange”, in which a “visibly annoyed” Feinstein “told the group that she knows better as she explained her belief that a bold and ambitious Green New Deal is not urgently needed. You just need to shut up and wait, she basically told them.”

Feinstein “told the students that she doesn’t support the deal, mainly because there is ‘no way to pay for it’,” the Washington Post reports. In the end, the paper says she “did not say definitively which way she would vote on the deal”.

“But we have come to a point where our Earth is dying, and it is literally a pricey and ambitious plan that is needed to deal with the magnitude of that issue,” replied one 16-year-old student. “So we’re asking you to vote ‘yes’ on the resolution for the Green New Deal because —”

“That resolution will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here,” Feinstein interrupted. “I’ve been in the Senate for a quarter of a century, and I know what can pass, and I know what can’t pass.”

The Post says the student delegation “responded by pointing to military funding” and citing the 12-year climate action deadline in last year’s landmark IPCC report on 1.5°C pathways. “Any plan that doesn’t take bold, transformative action is not going to be what we need,” one student said.

“Well you know better than I do, so I think one day you should run for the Senate.” Feinstein responded. “Then you can do it your way.”

The Post notes that the two available videos of the exchange lend themselves to a range of interpretations. The Sunrise Movement initially shared an edited version, then posted the unedited video on its Facebook page. “Some agreed with the Sunrise Movement’s claim that she was short and dismissive of the students,” the Post states. “Others found the negative reaction to her comments as unreasonable, especially after watching the full video.”

During a re-election campaign last fall in which Feinstein, as she reminded her visitors, prevailed over fellow Democrat Kevin De Léon by a margin of nearly a million votes, the six-term senator appealed to youth by opposing the death penalty and defending the state’s marijuana industry, the Post reports. “While discussing the Green New Deal with the students Friday, however, she noted that the plan lacks support from Republicans, who control the Senate. She also discussed her own climate change legislation, which she said rivals the Green New Deal and has a ‘much better chance of passing.’ She offered to provide copies for each child and asked them to review it and let her know if they see issues.”

As well, “toward the end of the longer video, the senator is seen speaking with one of the students about a potential internship opportunity.



in Climate Action / "Blockadia", Ending Emissions, Energy Politics, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

kelly8843496 / Pixabay
Finance & Investment

BREAKING: Federal Budget Pours Tens of Billions Into Clean Economy

March 29, 2023
642
TruckPR/flickr
Hydrogen

Opinion: Hydrogen Hype Sabotages Potential to Decarbonize

March 28, 2023
378
icondigital/pixabay
Supply Chains & Consumption

New Federal Procurement Rule Requires Biggest Bidders to Report Net-Zero Plans

March 28, 2023
183

Comments 2

  1. Van R Ajemian says:
    4 years ago

    Whether coming from the left or the right, edited videos are a dangerous thing, as are creating incidents by manipulating youth. The exchange could have ended positively with the youth asking Feinstein to make her staff available to them to work on achievable solutions. I focused on ““That resolution will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here…” Who sent them there without a grounding in the workings of the US government? Was it intentional to do so, so as to get headlines? Also, how much time would have to be invested in pursuing passage of a resolution when there were several other priorities demanding a Senator’s time?

    Reply
    • Mitchell Beer says:
      4 years ago

      All potentially good questions. But as I compiled the story, one of my questions was: Why did Feinstein assume someone had sent the students, at a time when high schoolers around the world are rising up on their own initiative to take and demand action on climate change?

      When our son was eight, we were fighting some urgent budget issue before our local school board, and he insisted he wanted to come forward to make a deputation. I resisted at first, for two reasons. Mainly because I wanted to shield him from a truly toxic environment (I’d thought I was hanging out at the board building so he and his classmates wouldn’t have to). Also because I knew there was zero chance that the budget hawks on the board would give him credit for coming forward on his own. He insisted, my dad told the story with pride for the next quarter-century…but even among some of the friendly trustees whose votes we could usually count on, there was still a tacit assumption that I’d put him up to it.

      So let’s never assume, please, that people much younger than us can’t or don’t form their own intention and step up to speak for themselves, whether it’s on climate change or school budget cuts. Undermining them in that way speaks for worse of adults than it does of kids.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

kelly8843496 / Pixabay

BREAKING: Federal Budget Pours Tens of Billions Into Clean Economy

March 29, 2023
642
TruckPR/flickr

Opinion: Hydrogen Hype Sabotages Potential to Decarbonize

March 28, 2023
378
Faye Cornish/Unsplash

Abundance, Not Austerity: Reframe the Climate Narrative, Solnit Urges

March 26, 2023
155
U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement/flickr

Willow Oil Project in Alaska Faces Legal Challenges, Economic Doubts

March 19, 2023
759
Σ64/Wikimedia Commons

B.C.’s New Energy Framework a ‘Smokescreen,’ Critic Warns

March 28, 2023
60
Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Tesla App Mishap, Saudi Arabia Fights the IPCC, Fossil Industry Fights for its Life, Alberta Premier Wants More Gas Plants, and Carbon-Eating Fungi Could Feed Millions

March 29, 2023
62

Recent Posts

icondigital/pixabay

New Federal Procurement Rule Requires Biggest Bidders to Report Net-Zero Plans

March 28, 2023
183
UNICEF Ethiopia/flickr

Somali Canadians Aid Drought-Stricken Homeland as 43,000 Reported Dead

March 29, 2023
38
Prime Minister's Office/flickr

Biden’s Ottawa Visit Highlights EVs, Clean Grid, Critical Minerals

March 28, 2023
88
EUMETSAT/wikimedia commons

Cyclone Freddy Leaves Over 500 Dead on Africa’s Southeast Coast

March 23, 2023
63
Kern River Valley Fire Info/Facebook

SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20

March 20, 2023
341
IFRC Intl. Federation:Twitter

Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action

March 21, 2023
1k
Next Post
Greta Thunberg

EU Chair Commits Billions to Climate Mitigation, Endorses Thunberg’s #SchoolStrike

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}