Who can make the best argument for fighting climate change? If you said “scientists,” you have some catching up to do. The correct answer, the left apparently now thinks, is fifth-graders.

That’s clear after climate change warriors from a group called the Sunrise Movement on Friday used kids to confront Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The children obediently spit out rehearsed talking points about how the senator just had to support the Green New Deal.

In a democracy, you see, she had to listen to them, the voters (even if, as Feinstein pointed out, they were actually too young to vote).

The senator responded calmly and respectfully, fully engaging with the kids (and their grown-up puppeteers). She pushed back on their demands, informing them that the grandiose GND program is simply unaffordable. Hysteria, Feinstein was saying, doesn’t translate into policy.

How refreshing to see a lawmaker (a Democrat, no less) take the time to explain a bit of reality to the kids in an open dialogue. Alas, much of the left doesn’t want free debate; it wants, as Feinstein herself told the kids, “my way or the highway.”

She’s right: The whole point of using kids in the first place is to shut down debate. We must listen to the children: They’re young and innocent. They’re our future. They know best. Anyone who disagrees is somehow morally obtuse.

Thus, when Feinstein took issue with them, it infuriated many on the left.

One high-profile Feinstein critic: GND-backer Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In one of her “I’m just a regular person who happens to be making dinner on Instagram Live” videos, the 29-year-old novice congresswoman blasted Feinstein (though not by name). She mocked the 85-year-old lawmaker’s claim that, after 30 years in politics, “I know what I’m doing.” After all, Feinstein and her ilk have yet to solve all our problems, right?

In the video, which featured sweet potatoes and a side order of sanctimony, AOC also gave reasons to grant kids standing in the climate change fight: “There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult.” Even more: Global warming “does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?”

Uh, she might want to think that last point through: Without kids, who’ll fight the left’s political battles?

Perhaps AOC and others on the left have now given up on their mindless tautology about kids being our future. They’ve decided instead that they make better political pawns.

Feinstein, by the way, wasn’t the only target of the kids’ proxy war: On Monday, the Sunrise Movement also marched on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office to “fight for a Green New Deal.” Someone should tell the kids that McConnell is pushing for the Senate to take a vote on the Green New Deal.

That this is seen as some sort of dirty trick by GND supporters should go a long way toward showing the kids what the grownups around them are really all about.

Nor is it just the Sunrise Movement trying to brainwash and exploit kids. My synagogue in Brooklyn sent out an email a few days ago with the subject line: “Kids are standing up to climate change — yours can too!” It urged the youngsters to sign a petition to support a group of teens suing the federal government over climate change.

And two weeks ago, my child’s city public school launched an appeal for kids to join something called the Youth Climate Strike: “Come to the steps of NYC City Hall on 3/15/19 at 12 PM with signs and a list of environmental demands for your future.” That’s a school day, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to coerce them to skip class.

Perhaps the left feels emboldened after the kids in the Parkland high school shooting became America’s instant sages on the issue of gun control.

But let’s be honest: How good is your argument if you need to parade out youths, who are politically hard to rebut, to deliver it?

Short answer? Not very. And the grown-ups know it.

“Young people are leading, get used to it,” Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff tweeted, in an attempt to push back on the idea that the children who confronted Feinstein are “political pawns.” To believe that, of course, you have to ignore all the people behind the curtain.

Twitter: @Karol