Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez garnered a lot of publicity last month when the 28-year-old self-described “democratic socialist” from the Bronx beat longtime US representative Joe Crowley in the New York primaries. She is practically certain to win a seat in Congress in the general election this November.

While her economic policies have inspired the Democratic base, her advocacy on climate change is noteworthy. Specifically, she’s calling for a “Green New Deal” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition our economy to one based on clean technology, like renewable energy. While she’s not the first politician to make this part of her platform (Jill Stein also tried), she may be the most high-profile at this point.

As E&E News reports [pay-walled]:

“What we are proposing is the complete mobilization of the American workforce to combat climate change and income inequality simultaneously,” Ocasio-Cortez told HuffPost. “The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in the World War II or the Marshall Plan. It will require the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of millions of high-wage jobs.”

Among the specifics, she wants the U.S. to achieve 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035 and otherwise work to modernize the grid.

From my perspective, this bold advocacy is refreshing. It not only summons the urgency of the need to combat climate change, it transforms the solutions into a jobs and economic development strategy. Those economic benefits are both politically important to inspire regions of the country that need the jobs and also a logical and positive consequence of investing billions of dollars to modernize and clean our energy system, from the electricity to the transportation sectors and beyond.

I hope her advocacy will inspire other elected officials to follow suit. It could be a winning strategy for climate advocates in future elections.