Leftists have been practically leaping for joy since 28-year-old self-described democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her primary election for Congress last week, an outcome that CNN called “the most shocking upset of a rollicking political season.” But perhaps no group has been more excited than environmentalists. In a political environment where even her fellow Democrats often stay vague on climate change, Ocasio-Cortez has been specific and blunt in talking about the global warming crisis. She also has a plan to fight that crisis—one to transition the United States to a 100-percent renewable energy system by 2035.

To achieve this ambitious goal, she has proposed implementing what she calls a “Green New Deal,” a Franklin Delano Roosevelt–like plan to spur “the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of millions of high-wage jobs,” according to her official website. “The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan,” she told HuffPost last week. “We must again invest in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy, but this time green energy.”

These positions have earned Ocasio-Cortez significant positive press. HuffPost called her “The Leading Democrat On Climate Change;” Vice called her “the Climate Change Hardliner the Planet Needs.” But those stories also note the political obstacles in Ocasio-Cortez’s way. There’s the climate-denying Republican Party, of course, but there are also Democrats, who have largely ignored climate change this election season and lack an organized plan to tackle it. How can a plan like Ocasio-Cortez’s see the light of day when her own party seems likely to bury it?

If @Ocasio2018 wins, it'll be a historic victory for the climate movement.



Her proposal -- outlined here in an email to me -- to deal with global warming is among the only equitable and scientifically realistic policies put forward by any Democrat running this year. pic.twitter.com/UDJKBNcifZ — Alexander Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) June 26, 2018

But an equally important question is whether such a plan would, from the scientific perspective, work. Very few plans politicians have floated recently have even come close to the level of drastic change researchers say the world would need in order to halt global warming before it reaches dangerous levels. How does this one stack up?

If and when Democrats do decide to mobilize on global warming, climate scientists tell me their plan should look at least something like Ocasio-Cortez’s. “A plan of the magnitude and pace proposed by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez would be a critically important step in the right direction, albeit long overdue,” said Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State, agreed. “This is just the sort of audacious and bold thinking we will need if we are going to avert a climate crisis,” he said.