Harris administration solves climate---Trump exacerbates it.

Kamala Harris has a strong record on the environment that will provide a vivid contrast with Donald Trump, who has vowed to rescind climate change policies should he return to the White House, according to green advocates who have welcomed the prospect of a Harris presidency.

“We are confident that she is ready to carry forward President Biden’s historic legacy and set a new high bar for climate ambition in America,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen, one of a raft of green groups, including Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters Action Fund and the NRDC Action Fund that have now endorsed the leading contender for the Democratic nomination.

Harris, as vice-president, cast the tie-breaking vote to pass Joe Biden’s landmark legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which unleashes hundreds of billions of dollars into building clean energy and electric car capacity. Biden, in his Sunday letter confirming he will drop his bid to be re-elected president, called the bill “the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world”.

Extolling this record, faced by an opponent who dismisses a climate crisis that is of growing concern to American voters amid a scorchingly hot summer, will be a key task for Harris should she gain the Democratic nomination. “President Harris would kick ass against Trump,” said Gina McCarthy, Biden’s former chief climate adviser.

“She has spent her whole life committed to justice, fighting for the underdog, and making sure that no one is above the law. She will fight every day for all Americans to have access to clean air, clean water and a healthy environment.”

Harris’s work on environmental issues stretches back to the early stages of her career two decades ago, when she created one of the US’s first environmental justice units as San Francisco’s district attorney. Later, as attorney general of California, Harris secured multimillion-dollar settlements from Volkswagen for rigging vehicles with emissions-cheating software and from the oil firms Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips for environmental violations.

She once claimed, incorrectly, that she also sued ExxonMobil, although she did investigate the company over its climate change disclosures. As a US senator, Harris further built her climate credentials by becoming a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, a resolution that called for the US to swiftly transition to 100% clean energy while providing well-paying jobs and healthcare assurances.

When Harris ran for the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, she promoted a green agenda far more ambitious than Biden’s, calling for a carbon tax, a ban on fracking for oil and gas on public lands and a $10tn investment to help combat global heating.

While this turned into little more than a wishlist, Harris became a champion of Biden’s climate bill once she became vice-president. She represented the US in Biden’s stead at last year’s Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai where she took a thinly veiled swipe at Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and promised to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas if elected again.

“Continued progress will not be possible without a fight,” Harris told assembled world leaders at the Cop28 talks. “Our action collectively, or worse, our inaction will impact billions of people for decades to come.

“Around the world, there are those who seek to slow or stop our progress. Leaders who deny climate science, delay climate action and spread misinformation. Corporations that greenwash their climate inaction and lobby for billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies.”

Harris no longer mentions the Green New Deal – which has been roundly vilified by conservatives – but environmental groups see an instinctive ally in the vice-president, should she secure the nomination and beat Trump.

Climate groups who said just last week they questioned Biden’s ability to win in November are now starting to swing behind Harris. “We’re ready to go full steam ahead talking with young people about the stakes of this election and what a second Trump presidency would mean for our generation,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of Sunrise, the youth-led climate group.

Kamala win secures climate funding and prevents Trump climate policy reversal

Teirstein 24’ ( Zoya; Vox “What Kamala Harris’s Track Record on Climate Makes Clear” AS)

Former President Donald Trump has vowed to undo many of the policies Biden accomplished if he becomes president, . And scores of his key advisers and former members of his presidential administration contributed to  that advocates for scrapping the vast majority of the nation’s climate and environmental protections. Whichever Democrat runs against Trump has a weighty mandate: protect America’s already tenuous climate and environmental legacy from Republican attacks.

With Biden’s endorsement, Vice President Harris, a , is the favored Democratic nominee, but that doesn’t mean she will automatically get the nomination. There are fewer than 30 days until the Democratic National Convention on August 19. The thousands of Democratic delegates who already cast their votes for Biden will either decide on a nominee before the convention or hold an open convention to find their new candidate — something that .

As vice president, Harris  for the allocation of $20 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, aimed at aiding disadvantaged communities facing climate impacts, and frequently promoted the IRA at events, touting the bill’s investments in clean energy jobs, including installation of energy-efficient lighting, and replacing gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. She was also the highest-ranking US official to attend the international climate talks at , where she announced a US commitment to double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. At that same conference, Harris  a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations adapt to climate challenges, although  that the sum was “subject to the availability of funds,” according to the Treasury Department.

“Vice President Harris has been integral to the Biden administration’s most important climate accomplishments and has a long track record as an impactful climate champion,” Evergreen Action, the climate-oriented political group, said in a statement.

Harris caught some flak for using a potentially overstated  figure to describe the Biden administration’s climate investments. She got that sum from , some of which are only vaguely connected to climate change.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris  a $10 trillion climate plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 on the campaign trail, including 100-percent carbon-neutral electricity by 2030. Under the plan, 50 percent of new vehicles sold would be zero-emission by 2030; and 100 percent of cars by 2035. But that proposal, like similarly ambitious climate change proposals released by other Democrats during that election cycle, was nothing more than a campaign wishlist. A better indicator of what her plans for climate change as president would look like — better, even, than her record as vice president, as much of her agenda was set by the Biden administration — could be buried in her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017.

As district attorney, Harris  an environmental justice unit to address environmental crimes affecting San Francisco’s poorest residents and  several companies including U-Haul for violation of hazardous waste laws. Harris later touted her environmental justice unit as the first such unit in the country.  found the unit only filed a handful of lawsuits, though, and none of them were against the city’s major industrial polluters.

As attorney general, Harris secured an $86 million settlement from Volkswagen for rigging its vehicles with emissions-cheating software and investigated ExxonMobil over its climate change disclosures. She also  a civil lawsuit against Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips for environmental violations at gas stations, which eventually resulted in a $11.5 million . And she  of an oil company over a 2015 spill in Santa Barbara. The company was found guilty and .

“We must do more,”  late last year at the climate summit in Dubai. “Our action collectively, or worse, our inaction will impact billions of people for decades to come.”