Beto: ‘We don’t have more than 10 years to get this right’

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) said Tuesday at the Democratic primary debate in Detroit that “we don’t have more than 10 years” to address the climate crisis and that we can’t do so with “half-steps or half-measures.”

But that timeline isn’t consistent with the climate plan O’Rourke proposed earlier this year.

{mosads}In April, O’Rourke released a $5 trillion climate plan that called for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The plan initially spurred backlash from the Sunrise Movement, one of the backers of the Green New Deal, though the group later walked back that criticism, calling it “a great start.” 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of the sponsors of the Green New Deal, also criticized O’Rourke’s timeline.

“Personally, I think we need to have more aggressive timelines than that to be honest,” she told The Hill in April.

“I think that the science and the IPCC [report] shows exactly what we need, and our legislation needs to be in line with that,” she added, referring to the climate assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.