Typically when young people visit their senator’s office, they go home with a bunch of grip-and-grin photos showing them shaking hands with the lawmaker.

But when an environmental activist group brought several children to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco office Friday to lobby her to back the Green New Deal, what they got was more of a finger-wagging than a handshake.

The group, the Sunrise Movement, posted a video that promptly went viral of Bay Area kids ages 7 to 16 quarreling with the 85-year-old Democrat, who was just elected to her fifth full term.

The Sunrise Movement wants lawmakers to pass the Green New Deal, a nonbinding proposal backed by first-term Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., that calls for the U.S. to run on 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years.

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

The proposal is popular with left-leaning Democrats. But there are plenty of other ideas attached to the resolution, including a guarantee of universal health coverage and government support for making college affordable for all. It contains no cost estimates or funding sources. Republicans have denounced it as socialism on the march and centrists, including Feinstein, are dubious.

In their get-together Friday, Feinstein told the group of young people that the proposal had no hope of passing the Republican-controlled Senate, and explained that she had a version that might stand a chance.

In the two-minute, 19-second video posted by Sunrise, an edited version of a roughly 14-minute exchange, one of the children tells Feinstein, “Some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this (the effects of climate change) around.”

“Well, it’s not going to get turned around in 10 years,” Feinstein replies.

One of the children says, “The government is supposed to be for the people, by the people.”

“You know what’s interesting about this group?” Feinstein replies. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and it has to be my way or the highway. I don’t respond to that. I’ve gotten elected. I just ran. I was elected by almost a million-vote plurality. I know what I’m doing. So maybe people should listen a little bit.”

“I hear what you saying, but we’re the people who voted for you,” a teenager says to Feinstein. “You’re supposed to listen to us.”

“How old are you?” Feinstein asks.

“I’m 16, I can’t vote,” the girl replies.

“Well, you didn’t vote for me,” Feinstein says.

An adult with the group tells the senator that any climate change proposal that doesn’t “take bold, transformative action is not going to be what we need.”

“Well, you know better than I do,” Feinstein says. “So I think one day you should run for the Senate. And then you do it your way.

“But in the meantime,” Feinstein adds, “I just won a big election.”

The edited Sunrise version ends shortly thereafter. The full video shows that the atmosphere became less tense after the meeting broke up and Feinstein walked with some of the youths in her office, explaining her position. At one point one of the teenagers asked about an internship, and Feinstein appeared to tell her staff to arrange it.

Sunrise spokesman Stephen O’Hanlon said Feinstein’s opposition “shows why we need fundamental change in the Democratic Party. Leaders like Feinstein are out of touch with the center of energy in the party, which is with the grassroots movement for a Green New Deal.”

Feinstein issued a statement saying, “I want the children to know they were heard loud and clear. I have been and remain committed to doing everything I can to enact real, meaningful climate change legislation.

“We had a spirited discussion and I presented the group with my draft resolution that provides specific responses to the climate change crisis, which I plan to introduce soon.”

The youths may not have gone home with a photo of Feinstein, but they got a bigger souvenir in the digital age: The video of their encounter was viewed 1.4 million times within its first few hours online.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli