(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) faced awkward moments during a town hall meeting on Thursday evening, when a woman stood up and said it was time to “start eating babies” to save the planet from imminent climate-induced doom.
The incident in Corona, New York sparked some heated posts on Twitter later, with President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez herself among those weighing in.
“We’re not going to be here for much long [sic] because of the climate crisis,” the woman began, after standing up uninvited and being handed a microphone.
“We only have a few months left!” she declared. “I love that you support the Green [New] Deal but it’s not ge – getting rid of fossil fuel is not going to solve the problem fast enough.”
The woman, who spoke with a northern European accent and appeared to be deadly earnest, then referred to recent news reports about a Swedish professor having said “we can eat dead people.” (Snopes has raised questions about the accuracy of those reports.)
“But that’s not fast enough,” she continued, gesturing to a slogan on her T-shirt and removing a jacket so the words could be more clearly seen: “Save the Planet. Eat the Children.”
“So I think your next campaign slogan has to be this: ‘We’ve got to start eating babies.’ We don’t have enough time. There’s too much CO2! All of you, you’re, you’re, you know you’re pollutant. Too much CO2! “We have to start now. Please.”
And to Ocasio-Cortez again, “You are so great. I’m so happy that you really support the Green New Deal. But it’s not enough, you know. Even if we would bomb Russia? We still have too many people, too much pollution.”
“So we have to get rid of the babies – that’s a big problem. Just stopping having babies is not enough. We need to eat the babies.”
Amid growing murmurs, Ocasio-Cortez interjected, “No, thank you, thank you. We’ll go ahead.”
The microphone was moved away, and after some indistinct cross-talk, Ocasio-Cortez said, “One of the things that’s very important to us is that we need to treat the climate crisis with the urgency that it does present.”
“Luckily, we have more than a few months.” (“No, we don’t,” the woman was heard saying.)
“We do need to hit net zero [carbon emissions] in several years,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But I think we all need to, to understand that there are a lot of solutions we have, that we can pursue. And that if we act in a positive way, there’s space for help. There’s – we are never beyond hope.”
The woman was seen being escorted out.
Later, Donald Trump Jr. posted a link to a video clip of the incident on Twitter, and commented, “Seems like a normal AOC supporter to me.”
President Trump then retweeted his son’s post, adding, “AOC is a Wack Job!”
“Better than being a criminal who betrays our country,” retorted Ocasio-Cortez.
Sanders, who underwent an emergency medical procedure this week, also reacted to Trump’s “Wack Job,” post, tweeting back at the president, “It’s going to be a real pleasure defeating you.”
An article last year in Psychology Today referred to a phenomenon called “eco-anxiety,” which the writer described as “a fairly recent psychological disorder afflicting an increasing number of individuals who worry about the environmental crisis.”
“Eco-anxiety” also featured in a 2017 American Psychological Association report examining what it called “the psychological impacts of climate change on human mental health and well-being.”
That report defined “eco-anxiety” as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.”
“Watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations, may be an additional source of stress,” the APA report said, referencing earlier studies.
Source material can be found at this site.
