Flanagan mocks our youth. However, we believe that our voices, as Senator Feinstein’s young constituents, matter, especially since our generation will face imminent climate disaster if bold action is not taken immediately. Our future lies in the hands of the adults. The government officials. The people denying climate change. The people who further destroy our environment. They will not raise kids in that environment. They will not have to put on a mask to step outside. They will not have to look back and remember when the polar bears were still alive. Some people who control our future do not understand our anger or our fear.

They also may not understand that we care for our environment and that we understand the fatal destruction of climate change. We know what we are talking about. We have read the proposals, and we understand the science. Because it is our future. Despite being young, we are capable of defending our only home.

We respect Senator Feinstein’s legislative experience and accomplishments. She has broken barriers for women in politics, both in San Francisco and in the U.S. Senate. She has raised her voice where women’s voices have previously been unheard. Even politicians who have broken glass ceilings still represent us and should be responsive to the pressing issues of the current moment.

Flanagan’s caustic tone makes light of the severity of the climate crisis. The past five years have been the hottest ever recorded. The seas are rising, warming, and acidifying. Coral reefs are dying. Glaciers are melting. Western forests have more than 6 billion dead trees. What we need is serious, responsible action to protect the planet that is home to all humans and life. The Green New Deal gives our generation hope that we have a chance of averting the impending disaster because it addresses the climate crisis by setting goals to create millions of jobs with livable, family-sustaining wages and to protect and strengthen the rights of all workers. For example, it hopes to stop the transfer of jobs overseas and protect the workers whose current income is dependent on the fossil-fuel industry. The Green New Deal acknowledges that we can no longer ignore or deny the intersections. We cannot fight for climate justice without also fighting for racial justice, without also fighting for economic justice.

We agree with Heather McGhee, who said on February 24 on Meet the Press, “There’s no higher responsibility of anyone who has any kind of political power right now than to try and stop a global catastrophe that is not happening in three generations. It’s happening now.”

Despite Flanagan’s unfounded assertion that we, the youth, had “fallen apart,” or been “right-sized,” we know we are strong. In the words of Alice Walker, “The most common way that people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”