Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is making headlines again after she issued a dire warning about the end of the world Monday.

Speaking at a Martin Luther King Day event, Ocasio-Cortez said Millennials think climate change will destroy the earth in a short time and criticized opponents of the "Green New Deal," policies she claims will combat climate change and save the planet.

“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that 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 gonna pay for it?'" Ocasio-Cortez said.

Obviously, the world is not going to end in 12 years, and that's a dumb thing to say. But instead of just mocking her, conservatives need to understand what she's actually talking about. Ocasio-Cortez is referring to a United Nations study that exacerbated climate hysteria last October by declaring the world has just 12 years to keep global warming at a maximum of 1.5C, else the report claims rising temperatures will lead to drought, floods, extreme heat, and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. The report demands that the entire world totally replace all fossil fuel energy by 2050 to avert the coming climate crisis, but that's not feasible. The costs to achieve this are astronomical, and there exists no means of forcing every country on planet Earth to reduce its carbon emissions.

But here in America, at least, the democratic socialists have a plan. The Left's "Green New Deal" plan proclaims that the United States can transition to "100% green renewable energy (no nukes or natural gas)" by 2030 if lawmakers follow a few simple and easy steps to destroy the free market system. At National Review, Jim Geraghty has a great rundown of the key points of the plan, which include:

Cutting U.S. military spending by at least half, which would put about 1.4 million military personnel out of work;

Eliminate coal, liquid natural gas, oil, and nuclear power as sources of energy, which amount to 88 percent of U.S. energy sources;

Kill 5.8 million jobs in these energy sectors and attempt to replace those jobs with government jobs.

"This is not possible short of a societal collapse to agrarian subsistence," Geraghty writes. He's right, but degrowth is actually the goal for some on the Left.

Needless to say, the government would have to vastly raise taxes and commandeer industry to enact those policies — which, as a socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks is totes amazeballs. Who cares about the costs when the world is going to end, right?

You should care. You and your family should care because Ocasio-Cortez's plan is going to raise your taxes, raise your energy costs, and restrict your freedom — and it won't even stop climate change. Even if the Green New Deal is democratically adopted in the United States, it won't be adopted everywhere in the world. While the U.S. kneecaps its economy and military in the name of saving the planet, China, Russia, Iran and others will expand their militaries, grow their economies, CO2 emissions be damned, and advance against America while we are weakened. The Green New Deal won't stop climate change. It will risk destruction of the country to virtue-signal that we really really care about climate change and think it's bad.

So don't just laugh off Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's dumb comments. Take her seriously. Her name recognition and popularity are increasing with all the media attention she receives. A new poll from Axios found that 74 percent of Democrats and independents who lean Democrat would consider voting for her for president if she were old enough to run. Ocasio-Cortez can't run in 2020, but she will be eligible in 2024, and she is not going to go away. As long as she has a platform to push her dangerous ideas — and the Green New Deal is dangerous — her ideas must be challenged.