Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to save the planet with her Green New Deal, but she keeps tripping over her own giant carbon footprint.
“We’re like, ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,’ ” the progressive darling said in January, speaking of herself and her fellow millennials. “And, like, this is the war; this is our World War II.”
Last week, she ratcheted up the rhetoric: “It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult” due to climate change. “And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK to still have children?”
The guiding principle of her eco-vision is to bring about “a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases” within 10 years.
To achieve this, the GND fact sheet says, the nation must “totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail … create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle.”
But the woman who boasts of a “razor-sharp BS detector” seems to have trouble sniffing out her own.
Since declaring her candidacy in May 2017, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign heavily relied on those combustible-engine cars — even though a subway station was just 138 feet from her Elmhurst campaign office.
She listed 1,049 transactions for Uber, Lyft, Juno and other car services, federal filings show. The campaign had 505 Uber expenses alone.
In all, Ocasio-Cortez spent $29,365.70 on those emissions-spewing vehicles, along with car and van rentals — even though her Queens HQ was a one-minute walk to the 7 train.
The campaign shelled out only $8,335.41 on 52 MetroCard transactions.
“Everyone — top to bottom — used the MetroCards,” Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent told The Post.
By comparison, fellow freshman Rep. Max Rose — whose district is more than twice the size of AOC’s and, like hers, spans two boroughs — listed only 329 transactions for car services, totaling $6,091.29, campaign filings show.
In a district with limited transit options and a $17 Verrazzano Bridge toll, Rose spent only $732 more than AOC on gas and tolls — an indicator of personal car usage.
Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly attributed her success in beating Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley to walking the streets of her district, which includes parts of Queens and The Bronx.
“I knocked doors until rainwater came through my soles,” she tweeted last June, famously donating her worn-out campaign shoes to the Cornell Costume Institute for an exhibit about women and empowerment.
But Ocasio-Cortez and her staff appear to have done much less walking after she vanquished Crowley in the party’s June 2018 primary.
Instead, her campaign embraced the friendly skies, logging 66 airline transactions costing $25,174.54 during campaign season.