'Eat The Babies': AOC Hears Modest Proposal On Climate Change

QUEENS, NY — A woman pitched U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a bizarre plan to fight climate change Thursday evening that would have made Jonathan Swift proud.

"I think your next campaign slogan has to be this: We got to start eating babies," the woman told the progressive Bronx lawmaker at a town-hall event in Corona. "We don’t have enough time. There’s too much CO2. All of you, you know, you are polluters."

Wearing a T-shirt that read "SAVE THE PLANET, EAT THE CHILDREN," the woman argued Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal proposal to tackle the climate crisis was inadequate because "we only have a few months left."

Getting rid of fossil fuels will not slow the demise of human civilization, the woman said. Other far-fetched and disturbing proposals, such as eating dead people, would also be inadequate, she argued.

"Even if we would bomb Russia, we still have too many people, too much pollution," she said. "So we have to get rid of the babies. ... We need to eat the babies."

Ocasio-Cortez did not directly address the woman's plea for humans to start eating their young, but she said climate change does needed to be treated like an urgent crisis.

"I think we all need to understand that there are a lot of solutions that we have and that we can pursue, and if we act in a positive way, there’s space for hope," Ocasio-Cortez said.

After the event, as conservative figures such as Donald Trump Jr. ridiculed the episode, Ocasio-Cortez cautioned against mocking the woman, who she said "may have been suffering from a mental condition."

A climate change-denying political organization called the Lyndon LaRouche PAC appeared to take credit for the stunt hearkening back to Jonathan Swift's satirical essay "A Modest Proposal." The group bragged on Twitter that it "troll(ed) AOC" and said the congresswoman did not "rule out eating babies."

The political action committee is named for the political activist, conspiracy theorist and erstwhile presidential candidate whose movement of followers has been described as a cult. LaRouche died in February.

The LaRouche PAC supports President Donald Trump and, like many of its namesake's followers, casts climate change as a myth. Despite many warnings to the contrary from scientists and government officials, the organization posted a Friday statement saying that there is "no climate emergency" and that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is "not a pollutant."

"The demonization of (carbon dioxide) and the resulting goal of decarbonizing the world economy are just as rational as burning witches at the stake as a remedy for disease," LaRouche's widow, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, said in the statement.

Watch the bizarre encounter below, starting at 1:22:30.