New York Congresswoman and Democratic rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have won some converts to the Green New Deal by warning about the dire consequences of climate change while ruining a batch of macaroni and cheese.

On Tuesday night, Ocasio-Cortez hung out with fans via Instagram live, taking questions as she whipped up a batch of macaroni and cheese with almond milk. The first question she got was “How can we save climate I’m trying to have a nice life?”

“I understand this completely, obviously, even while I was on vacation I woke up in the middle of the night at 3:30 in the morning just concerned about climate change,” AOC said. “I’m 29 years old, I really struggle sometimes with the idea of how to be a policymaker, and potentially have a family in the time of climate change.”

She then proceeded to make sure everyone else would wake up freaking out at 3:30 in the morning by rattling off a short litany of climate change horrors that will have you googling.

“We are really blowing past a lot of the markers that scientists thought would happen years from now, and they are actually happening now, our glaciers are melting, our sea levels are rising,” AOC said, which is true.

Ocasio-Cortez went on to add “I’m scared about disease. There’s a lot of, there are a lot of things frozen in the tundra.”

“There are a lot of diseases that are frozen in some of these glaciers that scientists fear that there is a potential that a lot of diseases could escape these melted glaciers, things that were frozen for thousands of years, and that they’re going to get into our water, and that humans could contract them, and they’re going to be diseases that are thousands of years old that have vectors that we are not prepared for, that we have never seen,” she added.

“And so, you know, that’s a concern,” AOC said, and it actually is. Scientists think a 75 year-old reindeer corpse was responsible for a 2016 anthrax outbreak, and some other scientists “revived” a pair of 30,000 year-old “giant viruses” which, once revived, “quickly became infectious” — but only to amoebae. This time.

“Even if there are no diseases frozen at all in these glaciers, you have diseases that are spread by mosquitoes, and now mosquitoes are starting to fly further north that carry diseases like malaria, and a whole slew of other things,” AOC continued. That’s also true.

“So there’s disease, there’s sea-level rise, there is … And by the way, sea level rises probably one of the most expensive parts about climate change,” AOC continued. “You think overhauling our economy to decarbonize and saving the planet is going to be expensive? Try not decarbonizing our economy and allowing sea level to rise, every coastal city to go underwater, every Midwestern city or large swaths in the middle of the country experiencing drought on level that we have not seen, that’s going to be way more expensive.”

“You think artificially having to create our food supply because the Earth no longer can sustain growing foods naturally, or the sun is scorching the earth so much, that we can’t grow the food that used to be able to grow, that’s going to be a lot more expensive,” Ocasio-Cortez said, raising the specter of the villainous Soylent Corporation in the minds of any old people watching.

“So we need to bite the bullet on the cost, because the alternative to not spending the money is a, death, and b, spending even more money,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding “So, but anyways, I understand the fear.”

She went on to urge bold action on climate change, and said that “the best thing we can do is be as supportive of climate policy, and to prioritize it, like if you can make climate change one of your top three voting issues, that’s a huge thing you can do, but also if you change your personal consumption, that can do a lot as well.”

In the course of the full 35-minute video, AOC overcooked her macaroni, then let it get cold for 20 minutes while she answered questions. That’s probably not exactly the kind of sacrifice this crisis calls for, but it’s a start.

Watch above, via Ocasio2018.

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