For a generation, Democrats have moved ever more “progressively” to the extreme Left on climate change, advocating what we’ve dubbed ecofascist policies in order to undermine the free market in the name of combatting global warming. Their extremism continued this week, as the “new face of the Democratic Party,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is now leading a charge aimed at utterly remaking the energy sector.

The House’s Millennial heartthrob is pushing what Democrats are calling a “Green New Deal,” which is a series of legislative proposals that the Heartland Institute’s Justin Haskins calls “the most radical policy shift in modern U.S. history, dramatically increasing the size and power of government and running up the national debt by trillions of dollars.” He explains, “According to Ocasio-Cortez, the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and at least 40 House Democrats, would eliminate nearly all fossil fuels from the electric grid and force everyone in the country to buy from power companies selling only renewable energy.”

Haskins also notes, “Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal doesn’t merely advocate for a gigantic shift in the U.S. energy industry. Her draft resolution says one of the proposed House committee’s priorities would be ‘upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety.’ Taken literally, this mandate would cost trillions of dollars.”

How would she pay for that? With a 70% tax on the wealthy.

It’s ironic but predictable that just as the economy has come out of the Barack Obama doldrums, and just as U.S. energy production — primarily fossil fuels — is booming, Ocasio-Cortez and Company are increasing their socialist pressure on the energy sector. “We can use the transition to 100% [renewable] energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social, and racial justice in the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez said, giving away the game.

To be sure, with an expanded Republican majority in the Senate, this proposal stands little chance of making it beyond the House in this session of Congress. But Sanders, Booker, and Warren are all either declared or likely presidential candidates in 2020, which puts this issue at the forefront of that campaign and makes it a dire threat to American Liberty.

(Updated.)