On Thursday, policy director at New Consensus and one of the minds behind the Green New Deal, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, appeared on MSNBC with host Ali Velshi.
During the segment, Gunn-Wright compared the cost of not acting on climate change to the number of deaths that came about as a result of the Holocaust, times 25 (emphasis added):
VELSHI: A CNN/SSRS poll indicates that 82 percent of Democrats say that aggressive action on climate change is necessary. How do you … make the argument that [climate change] needs a separate discussion? Why not health care?
GUNN-WRIGHT: So, in the issues that you just brought up, climate change is one of the main drivers of our public health. So, the difference between, say, 1.5 degrees of warming – which is the least that folks think that we can get – to two, you’re talking about 150 million deaths. That’s 25 Holocausts, right? So, how is that not a health issue? How is that not about health care, right?
You’re talking about immigration. Climate change is going to bring hundreds of millions of climate migrants, of climate refugees, both from outside the U.S. and inside the U.S. as you see people move. So, even the issues that you outline, all of them are affected by climate change – and how you decide to deal with climate is how you decide to deal with all of these other issues. – READ MORE