As climate change worsens, so does President Donald Trump’s denial. On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that his administration is assembling a panel of fringe, industry-funded scientists who “represent the Trump administration’s most forceful effort to date to challenge the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive global warming and that the world could face dire consequences unless countries curb their carbon output over the next few decades.”

As Trump denies, though, Democrats delay. On Friday, in an encounter caught on video, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told a group of teenage and preteen climate activists that she won’t support the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to fight climate change introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey earlier this month. “There’s no way to pay for it,” she said, referring to the plan’s pledge to decarbonize the U.S. economy by the year 2030.



The children pleaded with Feinstein to be “brave” and to think about their future. “We’re the ones who are going to be impacted,” one girl pleaded. The 85-year-old insisted she understood, citing her seven grandchildren, but then dashed the schoolchildren’s hopes. “I’ve been in the Senate for over a quarter of a century,” she said, “and I know what can pass and I know what can’t pass.” Later, Feinstein put out a statement calling climate change one of her top priorities and released a draft resolution of her alternative to the Green New Deal.

This is how @SenFeinstein reacted to children asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution -- with smugness + disrespect.



This is a fight for our generation's survival. Her reaction is why young people desperately want new leadership in Congress. pic.twitter.com/0zAkaxruMI — Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) February 22, 2019

Feinstein is not a climate villain on par with Trump. She has a 90 percent lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters, while Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris agreement and his EPA is methodically attempting to undo everything it accomplished under President Barack Obama. But the California senator is the bigger threat to the left’s goal of slowing climate change before it’s too late.

The Earth has already warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius due to greenhouse gases released by mankind. Some scientists say the warming must remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius—or 2 degrees Celsius, according to others—to avoid an irreversible catastrophe. Meeting that goal will require the boldest action imaginable. There are bolder plans imaginable than the Green New Deal, but it’s certainly the boldest action that a significant number of politicians have ever backed.