When a group of young climate activists confronted Dianne Feinstein at her San Francisco office, the six-term Democratic senator cited her deep experience in Washington as the reason she wouldn't endorse the Green New Deal.
I've been doing this for three decades. Feinstein told the students that he knows what he's doing. It has to be my way or the highway, that's what you say when you arrive. I do not reply to that. I know what I'm doing after I was elected by almost a million votes. Maybe people should listen to something.
Feinstein said that the Green New Deal would die in the Senate.
Isha was told by the senator that she could take that back to sender.
A student protested that Feinstein should listen to the people she represents.
Feinstein said that he didn't vote for her.
"It's not important," a 10-year-old named Magdalena said. We are the ones who will be hurt.
The same year Time magazine named the teenage climate activist its "person of the year", a video of the exchange was recorded.
The protest got a huge reaction from the public.
"Politicians are like, 'Sorry, no can do' in the face of people who it's going to impact,'" he said.
Feinstein predicted that the Green New Deal resolution wouldn't go anywhere.
The tension between the nation's youngest Americans, who are demanding political action on a huge scale to fight the planet's climate crisis, and older government leaders who don't share their sense of urgency was shown in the episode.
The Democrats finally succeeded in addressing the biggest challenge facing the planet. In August, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that included incentivizing clean energy and reducing carbon emissions with more than $300 billion in direct investments and tax credits.
The inflation reduction act was a compromise package that didn't acknowledge the climate crisis. It was viewed as a half measure by some environmentalists. The law is not enough to meet the Biden administration's goal of net-zero carbon emissions by the middle of this century in order to curb the worst effects of climate change.
With Democrats bracing to lose their razor-thin majority in the House and a challenging 2024 election-season looming, the party will need to empower a new generation of leaders to build on its partial climate wins.
Climate change is a problem that will last a long time.
There is a clear age difference when it comes to addressing it. Younger people are more likely to support climate action than older people. They are more open to structural change because they are better educated. Older people will die before planet Earth experiences the most severe impacts.
Younger people will hold lawmakers accountable for their actions on climate.
"If we don't clean up our act on climate, we are going to lose the next generation of voters for our party," Whitehouse said. There is an unforgiving generation of voters coming along that is going to be very pissed that we allowed this to drift for 20 years.
Today's American political leaders are getting older.
One in four members of Congress are in their 70s or 80s, including the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The average member of Congress is older than the average American. Both Biden and Trump are close to 80. Young people are often shut out of elected office due to incumbency advantages and veteran lawmakers who refuse to step down.
Four months in the making, Insider's " Red, White, and Gray" series explores the costs, benefits, and dangers of life in a democracy helmed by those of advanced age.
The US passed its bedrock pieces of major environmental legislation back in the early 1970s, under President Richard Nixon, who privately derided the environmental movement but respected the power of grassroots activism.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act were created by Nixon.
"It's not that Nixon was an environmental guy, it's just the public demanded it and the energy came from younger people," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. The climate revolution needs to become a tidal wave where it dominates.
Conservatives have a different opinion on climate policy than the rest of the country.
Almost half of Republicans and Republican-leaning people between the ages of 18 and 29 think the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change. There is a wide gap on many climate related issues, from whether energy companies should transition to more renewables to whether stricter environmental laws are worth the cost.
According to polling done before the IRA was passed, younger Democrats were more likely to be frustrated by the Biden administration's actions on climate than older Democrats.
Older people tend to vote more frequently than younger people, skewing national priorities away from climate, because US political leadership doesn't look like America. The electorate is aging.
There aren't specific gaps on key public policy issues. Younger people are more likely to support structural change than older people. They're more focused on preserving their economic stability than the younger generation, according to a professor at Northeastern University.
"Younger people think that change is inevitable." "They know the world isn't going to stay the same, and we can either respond to these changes in crisis mode, or we can advocate for being more proactive and preparing for the changes."
Policy debates aren't really related to climate change. According to a 2020 study published in the journal Science, people born in 2020 will experience between two and seven times more extreme weather events than people born in 1960.
More education and better information about the crisis have made a difference in the lives of young people. For a long time, older Republicans were shaped by claims that climate science was bunk, that climate policy could only be achieved with overwhelming economic costs, and that climate change was a hoax created by China.
"What it comes down to for older Republicans is they're fearful of policies coming for their jobs and coming for their families' livelihoods," said the young founder of the conservative climate-action organization AmericanConservatism. When young people were growing up, they learned that fighting climate change didn't have to be at the expense of the economy.
Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina who was ousted from Congress in part over his support for a carbon tax, said that the GOP's decades of anti-climate messaging has influenced older voters.
Talking points are not always dead.
The politicians' views are influenced by the generations.
Robert told his father in 2004 that he would vote for him if he cleaned up his act on the environment. He saw evidence of climate change while visiting the Great Barrier Reef, as well as meeting with scientists.
Older politicians tend to downplay the climate crisis. The writer and climate activist pointed to the congresswoman who put climate at the center of her policy agenda and embraced left-wing climate activists as an example.
"She goes full throated activist on the climate issue, which is obviously not the way that older Democrats tend to do it," said NoiseCat. Younger Democrats tend to have a friendlier relationship with the party's activists than older Democrats do.
A representative for the congresswoman wouldn't give her an interview for this story. According to the lawmaker, "generational tension has existed among almost every single social movement in American history."
There are exceptions to the young-old disconnection on environmental issues. Some of the most outspoken democrats are elderly.
In order for an elected official to understand and respond to young people's concerns, they need to be young themselves. The political director at Data for Progress, a left-leaning think tank, said that she didn't think that was true.
She said that there should be more young leaders in power.
The real divide on climate is a partisan one and how activists secured the climate wins in the reconciliation bill is questionable.
I am not old. My age is not old. The lawmaker said he worked his butt off last year and this year after the House voted to pass the inflation reduction act. People need to make their voices heard and keep their foot on the pedal, but sometimes you have to have people that are willing to do the work to make it happen.
Dingell has faced pressure from progressive activists to act on climate change. She and her husband supported the auto industry in their home state.
Lawmakers' positions on climate issues are influenced by their friends and family. Most politicians will do what they can to win reelection.
Inglis said it was important for a leader of any age to pay attention to high-propensity voters who are disproportionately older and less concerned with the climate.
Climate change has been slowed down by fossil-fuel interests for decades. The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United opened the door to corporate and outside spending in elections and gave the oil and gas industry more power to fight climate legislation.
The oil and gas industry is one of the top five spenders on political lobbying this year.
"Politicians of any age are responding to the possibility of getting reelected, and there are two factors there." The massive expenditure of money in the political arena is subject to the voters' approval. He is a prominent climate scientist and professor of geosciences and international affairs at the school.
The Republican Party has turned to the right on climate over the last 15 years.
Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich sat on a couch outside of the Capitol in 2008 to film a TV ad that called on Americans to take action to address climate change.
Trump won the presidency with the help of Gingrich and he called climate change a hoax.
There are many Republicans in Trump's party who have embraced that position.
Bob Good said there is no climate crisis. There was a railing against the Inflation Reduction Act on the House floor.
In May, the head of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, Matt Schlapp, said he didn't care about climate change.
Climate change and carbon emissions are good for the planet according to a Georgia lawmaker.
According to a report from the Center for American Progress, in the 116th Congress, 30 Republican senators questioned the science of climate change. The members have taken over $60 million in donations from the oil, gas, and coal industries.
The Republican Party is powered by the fossil-fuel industry's carrot-and-stick behavior. Whitehouse has seen it in the Senate. There were multiple bipartisan, good, strong climate bills. Immediately after the Citizens United decision, it occurred.
Republicans get most of the money. According to Open Secrets, GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Romney have collected the most lifetime donations from people associated with the oil and gas industry.
A number of Democrats invest their own money in fossil fuels, while also raking in cash from the same.
The two Democrats who received the most oil and gas money were Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, according to Open Secrets.
According to Backer, younger Republican lawmakers are taking climate change more seriously than their elders. He pointed to a number of people.
Almost every member of Congress is a Republican under the age of 50. "These are people who range from conservative to moderate, but they all care about climate and they have done something about it."
Legislators who have made it to Congress can't hold real power in the chamber for years as older leaders hold on. Baby boomers and members of the silent generation make up the majority of committee chairs in the Democratic Party.
"If you are a young legislator, you have to sit and wait for 20 years to be chairperson of a committee and have the ability to move legislation that actually is the thing that goes to the floor." "That's going to be very hard to believe."
The Inflation Reduction Act is anIncremental step in the right direction, but it is unprecedented in scope.
Climate experts praise the law's tax credits for electric vehicles and solar energy, as well as investments in forest and coastal restoration, among other priorities.
The US is aiming for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030.
Many people still want bolder action to reach their climate goals.
Hartl said that the IRA is not enough. Everything the Biden administration has done so far has been insufficient. It won't get any easier. The more we delay, the harder it is to dig ourselves out of the hole.
Older voters and lawmakers won't allow a new generation of lawmakers to take over.
Whitehouse believes that the GOP and its conservative allies have worked to hurt Democrats and progress on climate.
Whitehouse is concerned that there are interests in American politics who would like to turn off young voters and make the government so unattractive to them that they don't show up. It's clear that high young-voter turnout is related to larger Democratic Party majorities. Bigger Democratic Party majorities mean better climate legislation.
In comparison to the disaster that climate change could wreck on the planet if it's not quickly addressed, environmental crises of years past have certainly posed tremendous challenges. Younger generations don't have a lot of time to win the crisis.
Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992. Feinstein and her colleagues failed to take action to slow climate change.
The Green New Deal was heavily influenced by the Biden administration's original $3.4 trillion build back better plan, which ended with the scaled back IRA.
The ambitious framework was used by progressive Democrats to push their own party to think bigger.
"I think it's possible to do the sort of radical intervention that we need, and I'm very hopeful," said the student activist, who is now 19 years old. Maintaining radical optimism is something I advocate for.
You have to land on the moon. People have not gained the progress that they have by compromising.
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