Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost $93 trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies

GREEN NEW DEAL OVERLOAD: Haven’t heard of the progressive climate change plan currently making its way through Congress? Well today might be the day for you to catch up!

 

What we’re seeing:

Dozens of climate protesters storm McConnell’s office over Green New Deal.

More than 100 youth climate protesters entered Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office Monday to advocate for the “Green New Deal” and challenge McConnell’s plan to fast-track a vote on the resolution in the Senate.

The youth climate advocates, members of the national climate group The Sunrise Movement, were seen overflowing from McConnell’s office into the stairwell in the Russell Senate Office Building on Monday morning.

Protesters inside his office held up a sign that read, “Mitch, Look Us In The Eyes.”

Within hours of the protests taking place, several members of the group could be seen being escorted out of the office in handcuffs by Capitol Police.

“As with all Kentuckians visiting D.C., we welcomed them to the office today. It’s worth noting that two weeks before, Senator McConnell had already announced that he will be bringing the Green New Deal up for a vote in the U.S. Senate,” McConnell spokesperson Stephanie Penn told The Hill.

The protesters delivered a petition containing 100,000 signatures to McConnell’s office calling on him to co-sponsor the “Green New Deal” resolution that was introduced in both the Senate and the House in early February by freshman lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

Read more on the action here.

 

How some conservatives fear the deal might boil down:

Center-right group: Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal could cost $93 trillion.

A center-right think tank said Monday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) Green New Deal could cost up to $93 trillion.

The analysis from the American Action Forum puts the price tag for the sweeping policy proposal between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over 10 years.

The Green New Deal resolution was introduced in both the House and Senate earlier this month by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

The non-binding proposal is focused on achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within the next 10 years while also creating millions of “good, high-wage jobs.”

The think tank, run by former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, broke up the cost of each major goal in the resolution.

They estimate that eliminating carbon emissions from the power and transportation sectors would cost between between $8.3 trillion and $12.3 trillion.

The American Action Forum estimates that the job guarantee in the resolution would cost $6.8 trillion to $44.6 trillion, while the promise for universal health care would cost $36 trillion over the 10-year period.

Markey pushes back.

Markey criticized the think tank’s findings on Monday, arguing that they included measures that are not in the Green New Deal.

“Any so-called ‘analysis’ of the #GreenNewDeal that includes artificially inflated numbers that rely on lazy assumptions, incl. about policies that aren’t even in the resolution is bogus,” Markey wrote in response to the report on Twitter. “Putting a price on a resolution of principles, not policies, is just Big Oil misinformation.”

Read more on center-right group’s estimates.

 

AOC’s latest climate thoughts:

Ocasio-Cortez says it’s ‘legitimate’ to ask if OK to have children in face of climate change.

Freshman lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) says it’s a “legitimate question” to ask whether it’s OK for parents to continue to have children in an age of looming climate-related consequences.

Speaking to her 2.5 million followers on Instagram over the weekend, the progressive lawmaker parsed the question she said she hears from her younger constituents.

“There’s scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?” she said.

The co-sponsor of a “Green New Deal” resolution making its way through the House and Senate, Ocasio-Cortez said time was of the essence to address how to reverse the effects of global warming within the 12-year timeline estimated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report last fall.

“We had time when I was born, but — ticktock — nothing got done. As the youngest member of Congress, I wish we didn’t have 12 years. It’s our lungs that are going to get choked with wildfire smoke. … Climate delayers are the new climate deniers,” said the 29-year-old lawmaker said on Instagram.

Read more here.

 

Happy Monday! Welcome to Overnight Energy, The Hill’s roundup of the latest energy and environment news.

Please send tips and comments to Miranda Green, mgreen@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow me on Twitter: @mirandacgreen, @thehill.

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STUDIES, STUDIES EVERYWHERE:

Monday marked a big day for climate change studies. Here are some key stories you might have missed.

—Evidence of humans causing global warming hits ‘gold standard’:

Evidence that humans cause global warming has hit the “gold standard” level of confidence, a U.S.-led team of scientists reportedly wrote in a journal article published Monday.

“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the scientists wrote in Nature Climate Change, according to Reuters, citing satellite measurements and rising temperatures over the past 40 years.

The scientists said that confidence in their prediction that humanity is raising the temperature on earth has reached “five-sigma” level, meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that similar data would appear if there was no warming, the news service added.

This “gold standard” has previously been applied for major scientific discoveries, like that of the Higgs boson subatomic particle in 2012, Reuters noted.

 

—Climate change’s connection to cloud loss could further doom earth:

The feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss could get global temperatures to their tipping point in as little as a century, according to findings released in the journal Nature Geoscience Monday. The study estimates that a certain type of “cloud” could go extinct by 2100, setting off massive warming feedback.

 

—You don’t think the globe is getting hotter? You’re perception may be off:

A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the decline of temperature anomalies may be obscuring public perception of warming global temperatures overall. Measuring Twitter responses, a group of scientists found that people may have short term memories when it comes to realizing what weather in their region qualifies as “normal” or “abnormal.” Researchers found that most people who commented on weather patterns on Twitter had a reference point that appears to be based on weather experienced between two and eight years ago.

 

OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY:

-Bayer gains edge in round two of roundup cancer-claim test cases, Bloomberg reports.

-Oil sinks more than 3 percent after Trump tells OPEC prices are too high, CNBC reports.

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Check out stories from Monday and over the weekend…

–Center-right group: Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal could cost $93 trillion

-Evidence of humans causing global warming hits ‘gold standard’: report

-Ocasio-Cortez: It’s ‘legitimate’ to ask if OK to have children in face of climate change

-Dozens of climate protesters storm McConnell’s office over Green New Deal

-Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid

-Trump urges OPEC to ‘take it easy’

-Iceberg twice the size of NYC about to break off of Antarctica

-White House committee to reassess climate science conclusions: report

-Interior looking to rely on staffers with less training for park law enforcement: report

-DOJ investigation into former Interior chief goes to grand jury