a change in the climate change debate.

Senator Mike Lee spoke in the Senate Tuesday with the promise to treat the Green New Deal "with the seriousness it deserves". What followed was a not-so-tight 12 that went viral, with big posters of Ronald Reagan firing a machine gun from the top of an American flag dinosaur and Luke Skywalker on a tauntaun on the Hoth Ice Planet . The Green New Deal is not the solution to climate change, said the Republican of Utah. "The real solution to climate change," he said, is "babies". According to him, global warming is simply "an engineering problem" that can be solved by future generations of engineers. "The solution to so many problems, anytime, anywhere," said Lee, "is to fall in love, to get married and to have children."

On the same day, on the other side of the Capitol, the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex had a viral moment of his own. In response to a charge by Representative Sean Duffy (R-Real World: Boston) that her Green New Deal was elitist, the New York Democrat did not need help. "Do you want to tell people that their concern and desire for clean air and clean water are elitist?" She said. "Tell that to the children of the South Bronx, who suffers from the country's highest rate of childhood asthma. Tell the families of Flint, whose children have the blood rising in lead. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitists. You tell them that these kids are trying to fly to Davos? People are dying. They die."

The clips were the latest reminders that Democrats viewed man-made climate change as the existential emergency evoked by science as a whole, and that many Republicans saw climate change as the perfect opportunity to control climate change. lib guest on Fox News. Tandem, however, the clips also indicate the future of the partisan struggle: from the discussion about that it behaves the United States should act to debate when it is necessary.

It's urgentsays Ocasio-Cortez. Let our children take care of themsaid Lee.

As laughable as Lee's swindler may be, the optimist in me sees progress for the GOP. The senator has recognized two things that a large part of his party, including the president, still refuses to accept: humans are warming the planet and humans will have to do something about it. Lee is not the only conservative legislator to have this trend either. Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee propose legislative responses (without baby) to the Green New Deal, respectively named Green Real Deal and New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy. Both are heavy with half-measures of R & D focused on conservative priorities such as carbon capture and nuclear energy – and do not set any serious emission targets – but explicitly recognize the fact that climate change poses a threat for Humanity. Other GOP Senators, including Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski and even Mitch McConnell now reluctantly recognize it, as do the dozens of House Republicans in the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus caucus, organized to "Educate members on economically viable solutions". options to reduce climate risks. This represents a significant shift from four years ago, when most GOP leaders bore climate denial in their own right as a sign of honor.

To be clear, Republicans argue that climate change needs to be addressed in the future is simply a different way of saying that it's not necessary to do it now. It's also a step forward if you look through a narrow lens. It was not long before 10 GOP Senators took the plunge in 2005 to vote with the Democrats on a resolution recognizing not only humanity's role in climate change, but also asking the government to do something about it. this subject. The late John McCain, one of those Republicans, won the GOP nomination in 2008, the year that Newt Gingrich sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi and told Americans: "Our country must take measures to combat climate change. they have a little less worse.

Nevertheless, the latest change in posture suggests that the GOP is starting to feel the heat of an American public increasingly worried about climate change. According to the latest survey conducted by Yale's climate change communication program, the number of Americans who say they are "alarmed" or "concerned" by the issue has doubled in the last five years to 59% . "Doubtful" or "disdainful" has dropped by more than half, reaching just 18%. The growing acceptance of voting by voters is undeniably good news, but being concerned is not the same as being concerned enough. In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, global warming ranked second among the top 18 political priorities for Americans, 26 points lower than the economy. There is a reason for almost all Democrats in the Senate, with The blessing of Ocasio-Cortez, elected "present" when McConnell launched his own Green New Deal stunt this week.

If the federal government needs to take real action to avoid the worst effects of climate change, it will have to get on both sides of the aisle, and soon. We should not be celebrating the Republicans who come to the table late, and certainly not to come to the door with a Sharknado 4 posters as their administration friends find ways to cancel the limited progress already made. But for the first time in about a decade, the climate debate in Washington changes, even slightly. If this brings us even closer to a constructive debate, I say: bring the Star wars gadgets. With Donald Trump at the White House, they could be our only hope.