Harris solves warming --- federal funding, bans, and restrictions on fuel --- empirically proven

At the top of President Biden’s letter announcing his withdrawal from his reelection campaign, he staked a major legacy claim, saying his administration passed “the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world.”

Now environmental groups and voters have begun parsing how Vice President Harris — and her possible running mates — might be different from Biden on key questions of climate change, the movement away from fossil fuels, and environmental regulation.

While climate issues might not be decisive in swing states in November, this election has enormous implications for the trajectory of the U.S.'s carbon emissions in coming years. The Biden administration has put the country on a path to lower planet-warming emissions by funding the transition to clean energy. Former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has been hostile to the idea of climate change and unabashedly pro-fossil fuels.

Environmentalists have long praised Harris’s commitment to climate and environmental issues, beginning when she was a local elected official in California. She created an environmental justice office while district attorney in San Francisco, prioritized electric school buses, opposed drilling on public lands, and defended California’s push to require less-polluting cars. As a senator, she was an original sponsor of the Green New Deal.

The League of Conservation Voters has given Harris a near-perfect lifetime voting record on environmental issues. Prominent environmentalists praised the Biden administration’s climate policies and said they would be in good hands if Harris were to move to the top of the ticket.

Monday evening, a group of prominent environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the political advocacy arms of LCV and the Natural Resources Defense Council, endorsed Harris’s campaign.

“I think these issues really are core to who she is, and she cares deeply,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. “I think she would be rock solid and determined to carry on and build on the progress of this administration.”

When Harris ran for president five years ago, she staked out a more liberal climate stance than her eventual running mate. Harris vowed to end federal support for the fossil fuel industry and immediately stop new oil leases on federal lands and waters. She endorsed a ban on fracking — which Biden did not — and proposed a $10 trillion plan to fight climate change, which she described as “an existential threat to us as a species.”

Some of her campaign promises got dropped along the way. During the Biden administration, oil permitting on federal lands and waters has outpaced the Trump administration. The Willow project — ConocoPhillips’s controversial drilling plan in the Alaskan arctic — got the green light. The oil industry still gets tax breaks, although the administration raised fees for drilling on public land.

Despite this, environmentalists have praised the Biden-Harris administration for turbocharging the renewable energy economy — particularly through the Inflation Reduction Act — and tightening environmental regulations loosened by Trump.

“President Biden has done more on climate and clean energy than any other president by far, and we are eternally grateful,” Sittenfeld said.

As vice president, Harris — whose candidacy Biden endorsed Sunday — cast the tiebreaking vote on the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which provides hundreds of billions in government subsidies for electric cars, solar panels, and other clean energy technology. The law is expected to help reduce emissions about 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Harris has spent time on the road touting these achievements and last year led the United Nations COP28 climate summit in Dubai, where she said “we must do more” to halt the warming of the planet.

At an event in Charlotte, in April, Harris aggressively defended the Biden administration’s actions on climate change, saying the investments it had overseen ultimately will create millions of jobs, provide huge amounts of capital for clean energy projects and lower energy bills for many American families.

“When we invest in climate, we create jobs, we lower costs, and we invest in families,” Harris said.

The Biden administration worked to reverse many of Trump’s regulatory rollbacks that weakened pollution rules and made it easier for oil and gas companies to operate. It also enacted an EPA rule to limit tailpipe pollution in coming years, forcing a shift to zero emissions vehicles that are expected to amount to more than half of new cars sold by 2032. Republicans and oil industry groups have criticized the effort to phase out gas-powered cars.

In the past, Trump mocked climate change as a “hoax.” As president he embraced coal mining and oil drilling, rolled back or eliminated more than 100 regulations designed to protect the country’s land, air, and water, and pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement, the main forum for nations of the world to address the warming planet.

“It’s fair to expect a Harris Administration approach to climate and energy policy would follow the California model,” Kevin Slagle, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, said in a statement. “We could see EV mandates imposed nationwide, new production bans and further restrictions on fuel and energy choices.”

In the Senate, Harris proposed bills aimed to help low-income and minority communities avoid harm from pollution and contaminated water.

As California attorney general, she helped win about $50 million in settlements by suing oil companies such as Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips over pollution issues, her campaign said in 2019. She also filed criminal indictments against a pipeline company relating to a 2015 oil spill in Santa Barbara County. The company was found guilty in 2018.

“I was proud to be a fighter and took on the Big Oil companies — great, powerful interests,” then-Sen. Harris said in a “Climate Crisis Town Hall” hosted by CNN in September 2019.

She suggested she would take executive action and use the legal system where possible to punish polluters.

“On this issue, guys, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not a question of debating the science. It’s a question of taking on powerful interests, taking on the polluters, understanding that they have a profit motive to pollute,” Harris said during the town hall.

After that event, Harris took criticism for one of her statements, when she claimed: “I have sued Exxon Mobil.” In fact, New York had sued, but not California, and Harris later clarified that she investigated the oil company relating to what it knew about climate change.

For Democrats, climate change is a key issue for the next administration, and one that energizes young voters, as the world continues to get battered by rising sea levels, intensifying floods, megadroughts, and steadily rising temperatures.

And any Harris-led ticket will be a stark contrast to Trump. The Republican Party platform adopted last week did not mention climate change. Instead, coming off the hottest year on record, it celebrated fossil fuels, saying: “Drill, baby, drill.”