Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who left before the arrests began, said she was there to support the protesters and encourage Pelosi to listen to them. | AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais Energy & Environment Ocasio-Cortez, youth protesters storm Pelosi office to push for climate plan

More than 200 youth activists, flanked by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, flooded House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office this morning urging Democrats to act more decisively on climate change.

Capitol Police said they arrested 51 protesters for unlawfully demonstrating outside Pelosi's office in the Cannon House Office Building. The arrests began a few hours after the demonstration began, when protesters refused to leave the area. Pelosi said she welcomed the protest and called on the police "to allow them to continue to organize and participate in our democracy.”


Ocasio-Cortez, who left before the arrests began, said she was there to support the protesters and encourage Pelosi to listen to them. Ocasio-Cortez has not made clear yet whether she'll back Pelosi for speaker when Democrats hold leadership elections later this month, though noted today she's "looking forward to us working together."

“We need a Green New Deal and we need to get to 100 percent renewables because our lives depend on it,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters. “The IPCC themselves, they say we have 10 years left and I — not just as an elected member, but as a 29-year-old woman — am thinking not just about what we are going to accomplish in the next two years but the America that we’re going to live in in the next 30 years.”

The Green New Deal has become a rallying cry for liberals who want to build out renewable energy through a big infrastructure and jobs package, though there are few specific plans on what it might entail. Protesters outside Pelosi's office held signs asking, “what is your plan?”

Pelosi, though, will have to balance the desires of the party’s liberal wing and more moderate Democrats, all while keeping options open for the eventual White House nominee. Most observers don’t expect the caucus to tender ambitious climate change initiatives early in the new Congress following a campaign season that focused on health care and other priorities.

Protestors lined the hallways wearing shirts that said, “we have a right to good jobs and a livable future” and “12 years,” the latter a reference to the time window outlined in a recent United Nations report to stave off the worse impacts of climate change. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last month that sharp cuts to global carbon emissions are needed by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Pelosi welcomed the protesters and said she planned to address climate change by relaunching a special committee on the issue and including climate-related proposals in an infrastructure bill.

“We are inspired by the energy and activism of the many young activists and advocates leading the way on the climate crisis, which threatens the health, economic security and futures of all our communities," Pelosi said in a statement. "I have recommended to my House Democratic colleagues that we reinstate a select committee to address the climate crisis. House Democrats ran on and won on our bold campaign for a $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient to the climate crisis, while creating 16 million new good-paying jobs across the country.

Pelosi has racked up the support of many mainstream environmental groups like the League of Conservation Voters, who noted that she ushered the only successful cap and trade bill through the House back in 2009.

But organizers of Tuesday's protest say the Democrats need more than a piecemeal approach like a panel to examine settled science.

“Forty years ago, when we first knew about the science of climate change, that would’ve been a great first step,” said Garrett Blad, a volunteer with the Sunrise Movement, which organized the protest. “I think in 2018, when fires, floods, storms are getting worse and when the U.N. climate report says we have 12 years to radically transform our entire economy at a scale that’s unprecedented in human history, I think studying climate change is absolutely the wrong thing to do.”