Beto: We Only Have 10 Years Left to Act on Global Warming

The end is nigh, according to one of Democrats’ leading candidates for 2020, Beto O’Rourke.

Earlier this year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) warned that the world only has 12 years left outside some major congressional action to stop the climate from changing. On Monday, O’Rourke said that we actually have just 10 years. 

O’Rourke said recent weather events highlight the urgency of the climate crisis.

“You think about climate change, and at this point there can be no shadow of a doubt that our own excesses and emissions and inaction politically and as a country and a democracy, where each of us comprise the government, have led to the warming that we’ve seen so far, one degrees Celsius just since 1980,” O’Rourke said during an appearance at the 2019 ‘We the People Membership Summit.’ “And along this current trajectory, the fires, the droughts, the floods, the devastation that we are witnessing right now will only become profoundly worse. And those who will bear the consequences disproportionately are the generations that follow ours.”

The clock, O’Rourke said, is ticking.

“And so, if we are going to confront any of these challenges, whether it’s challenges to the economy or a system of health care or public education or confronting climate change before it is too late, within the ten years that we have left to us to act, then the single greatest mechanism that humankind has ever devised to call forth the power of the people, a democracy, must be fixed.”