She really let the cat out of the bag here, admitting that the left views climate change as a “vehicle” to achieve their social and economic goals.

The set up here is that Bernie Sanders hosted a Climate Change town hall event Monday with a handful of talking heads including Van Jones, Ocasio-Cortez, and the actress from the Divergent series. The segment of the town hall Ocasio-Cortez participated in was titled “Creating Jobs and a Sustainable Economy.” Sanders’ first question to Ocasio-Cortez was this: “We have heard over and over again from the Trump administration and from fossil fuel economists that if we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel…they are telling us it’s going to be a disaster for the economy. Is President Trump right?”

This brought a laugh from the audience. I guess there’s some sense in which making Trump the face of global energy (oil, gas, coal, etc.) makes sense, but really that system existed long before Trump and will exist long after him. Sanders is just doing what he does best, i.e. demonizing the rich.

Ocasio-Cortez takes the baton and runs with it. “It’s unsurprising that the response to any bold proposal that we have is to incite fear,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She continued, “To incite fear of loss, to incite fear of others, to incite fear of our future, but the only way we are going to get out of this situation is by choosing to be courageous.”

“First of all, it’s just plain wrong, the idea that we’re going to lose economic activity. As a matter of fact, it’s not just possible that we will create jobs and economic activity by transitioning to renewable energy but it’s inevitable. It’s inevitable that we’re going to create jobs. It’s inevitable that we’re going to create industry,” she said.

Just to pause for a moment here. There’s nothing inevitable about the economic system and broad prosperity we currently enjoy. In historical terms, it’s a recent invention and something of a miracle. Assuming that it will continue to bear fruit if you change everything is dumb. In fact, all you have to do is look at modern-day Venezuela to see that there are some left-wing policies that are incompatible with a functioning economy. It is possible to kill the golden goose if you aren’t careful.

In any case, Ocasio-Cortez’ most startling admission came next. “And it’s inevitable that we can use the transition to 100% renewable energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social, and racial justice in the United States of America. That is our proposal and that is what we are here to do,” she said.

Basically, this is Obama’s old pitch about a green jobs miracle and it’s exactly as convincing now as when Solyndra went out of business after borrowing a bunch of government money. Actually, it’s less credible now that the spokeswoman is the same person who thinks there is $21 trillion of waste in the Pentagon’s budget and the same person who has given up trying to explain where the money for her $32 trillion single-payer plan would come from.

It should be obvious why so many people on the right are hesitant to embrace the left’s enthusiasm for addressing climate change. Because for the left, this isn’t just a problem to solve, it’s an opportunity to achieve a larger goal, one which isn’t often discussed quite this openly as this. “Economic justice” in this case is just another way of saying Democratic socialism. And the problem with that is that it doesn’t work without massive tax hikes, literally double what most Americans are paying now.

Right now there are riots taking place in France over a relatively minor tax on diesel fuel which was created to fund renewable energy projects. That’s one current example of something Ocasio-Cortez fails to mention here. Yes, it’s entirely possible to transition to green energy right now, but it will make energy much more expensive for everyone. What you can’t do is a transition to green energy without paying the cost of that transition up front. And that cost won’t be just some theoretical money spent by officials in Washington, like a trip to the moon. That cost will show up in your energy bill every month for the foreseeable future, in addition to the higher taxes to pay for all the economic and social justice Ocasio-Cortez has in mind.

In short, the left sees climate change as a glide path to 1970s Sweden and refuses to acknowledge that there’s a very thin line between that and 2018 Venezuela. So what Ocasio-Cortez is doing in the clip below is selling us on the benefits of Democratic Socialism and hiding the price tag. In fact, that’s pretty much what socialists everywhere do whenever they open their mouths. Will there be lots of jobs in the green economy? Maybe. Will we have the same standard of living as we do now? Not a chance. Most of us will be paying much higher taxes and much higher fuel prices.

It’s easy to talk about fear of change as retrograde and reactionary when you’re telling people the change being offered is entirely positive and free of charge. It’s much harder when you have to admit that, for a lot of people, the result is going to be a government imposed financial diet which creates an inevitable limit to their personal freedom.

I’m not sure the country is interested in that bargain once it’s explained in more detail, which is why socialists create late-night infomercials like this one to sell their wares. Don’t delay, act now!