What a Harris campaign could mean for the fight against climate change

While climate issues might not be decisive in swing states in November, this election has enormous implications for the trajectory of U.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 presidential candidacy Biden endorsed Sunday — cast the tiebreaking vote on the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which provides hundreds of billions of dollars 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 April event in Charlotte, 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 at helping 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 ExxonMobil.” 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.”

Harris’s choice of running mate will likely be calibrated to give her the best chance to win in battleground states often reliant on fossil fuels. This could temper how hard she pushes a climate agenda. Here is a brief look at the environmental records of some of her possible running mates:

Andy Beshear

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has taken a more cautious stance on climate than many other Democrats.

Kentucky has been ravaged by deadly floods and other extreme weather disasters, but in his speeches, Beshear rarely mentions the impact of climate change in his coal-rich state, whose conservative voters have little love for Biden’s aggressive actions to reduce carbon emissions.

Last March, Beshear allowed a bill to become law that would make it more difficult to shut down retired coal plants. A few months later, Beshear rejected millions of dollars in federal climate funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, specifically for a program that gave states $3 million each to develop and implement plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollution.

Beshear signed a stringent ban on sustainable corporate governance, prohibiting consideration of environmental, social and governance policies, known as ESG, in state investments. Since becoming governor in 2019, he also signed a bill to prevent businesses from operating in Kentucky if they are found to be “boycotting” fossil fuels. Despite those stances, Beshear has been open to some aspects of the energy transition, such as touting the construction of new renewable energy projects on former mine sites.

Last year, Beshear won another term as governor, defeating his Republican challenger, Daniel Cameron, a fierce opponent of climate action.

Josh Shapiro

As governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro leads a swing state that’s the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country.

Shapiro has pushed for a wide-ranging renewable energy mix since he took office last year, including hydrogen and nuclear power, while promoting carbon capture to reduce emissions.

Some environmentalists have criticized Shapiro for partnering with natural gas companies as governor when he was more aggressive taking on the industry’s pollution, particularly with fracking, in his prior job as state attorney general.

Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania endorsed Shapiro in 2022 and said, as state attorney general, “he holds a record for cracking down on oil and gas companies and holding them accountable for polluting communities across the commonwealth through fines and prosecution.”

Shapiro has proposed creating a program to cap emissions from the state’s biggest polluters — similar to programs in California and Washington state. He has also called for putting Pennsylvania on a path to rely on renewables for 35 percent of its energy by 2035.

Mark Kelly

The League of Conservation Voters gives Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) a 93 percent lifetime rating in voting for pro-environmental and climate legislation, and the group endorsed him during his 2022 Senate campaign.

On Capitol Hill, he has served on the Energy and Natural Resources and the Environment and Public Works committees, and has co-sponsored a number of climate-focused bills. He also has been an outspoken supporter of the Inflation Reduction Act, calling it “a big down payment on reducing the amount of carbon we put up into the atmosphere.”

During an appearance on CNN last summer, as his state was mired in another heat wave, Kelly spoke about the need for more urgent action on climate change.

“When I went into space four times, I could see how thin the atmosphere is over this planet. It’s as thin as a contact lens on an eyeball. And we’ve got to do a better job taking care of it,” he said. “I have not seen in my time in the Senate many folks that deny that the climate is changing. That was a thing of the past. Now is, what do we do about it?”

Roy Cooper

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), a staunch ally of the Biden-Harris administration, has pursued a number of climate and environmental policies in a state where the legislature is dominated by Republicans.

During his tenure, Cooper has issued a number of executive orders, including one aimed at cutting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and reaching net zero by 2050. He has championed offshore wind energy, electric vehicles and reduced energy consumption in state-owned buildings. He has directed a number of actions to prioritize environmental justice in North Carolina, including one that state agencies must consider on any issue related to climate change, resilience or clean energy.

He has pushed for more stringent efforts to regulate “forever chemicals” in water sources, and has vetoed bills he has argued would hinder the state’s climate and environment goals.

Earlier this year, the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters gave Cooper — who is term-limited and cannot seek reelection — an “A” for his actions during his final year in office. The group wrote that he had “consistently demonstrated steadfast resilience in confronting major polluters” and “utilizing his executive powers to mitigate our most pressing environmental problems.”