Vice President Kamala Harris has for years made the environment a top concern, from prosecuting polluters as California’s attorney general to sponsoring the Green New Deal as a senator to casting the tiebreaking vote as vice president for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in U.S. history.
As she runs for the White House, Harris is widely expected to try to protect the climate achievements of the Biden administration, a position that could resonate with voters during a summer of record heat. A clear majority of Americans, 65%, wants the country to focus on increasing solar, wind and other renewable energy and not fossil fuels, according to a May survey by the Pew Research Center.
Last year, Harris flew to the United Nations global climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she told world leaders that “the urgency of this moment is clear. The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time.”
That was a subtle reference to former President Donald Trump, who made the United States the first and only country to withdraw from the global Paris Agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. (The United States subsequently rejoined under President Joe Biden.) The Republican nominee in the current race for the White House, Trump has indicated that he would again pull back from the global fight against climate change if he is elected in November.
“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,” Harris said at the summit. “In the face of their resistance and in the context of this moment, we must do more.”
Republicans have targeted the Inflation Reduction Act, promising to overturn it if they win control of Congress and the White House. That law pumps more than $370 billion over 10 years into wind, solar, batteries and electric vehicles. It is designed to help the country move away from fossil fuels, the burning of which is driving up global temperatures. At their convention last week, Republicans promised to halt any transition away from oil, gas and coal, and to promote more fossil fuel development.
Asked if Harris would pursue the policies she supported as a senator, like the Green New Deal, her climate adviser, Ike Irby, said she would focus on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, which she helped to pass.
“She will fight every day for all Americans to have access to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment,” Gina McCarthy, who served as national climate adviser under Biden, said in a statement Sunday. “Vice President Harris would kick ass against Trump.”
The vice president incorporated climate change into foreign relations, holding a round table in Bangkok to connect environmental activists with clean energy experts and starting a partnership with Caribbean countries to address climate change.
As a senator from California, the state that is at the forefront of climate policy, Harris promoted electrifying school buses to reduce greenhouse gases and to cut children’s exposure to diesel engine pollution. She also supported efforts to replace lead water pipes and promoted measures to help agriculture become more resilient to drought.
But she also took positions far to the left of Biden on climate change.
She was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, a nonbinding resolution supported by liberal Democrats that called for the United States to transition to 100% clean energy within a decade while providing people with job guarantees and “high-quality health care.” The measure never got out of committee.
When Harris ran for president in 2020, her climate plan called for a $10 trillion increase in spending over a decade as well as a price on carbon, with a dividend that would have been returned directly to households. Economists have said that a carbon tax would be the most effective way to get industries to reduce their pollution.
She also favored a ban on hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, which Biden said he opposed. Fracking is a technique that injects water and chemicals underground at high pressure to extract oil or gas that is otherwise difficult to access. Environmentalists say it pollutes the air and groundwater. California regulators have taken steps to ban fracking.
As California’s attorney general, Harris challenged federal approvals of offshore fracking along the California coast. She investigated whether Exxon Mobil lied to the public and its shareholders about the risks to its business from climate change, and whether such actions could amount to securities fraud and violations of environmental laws, but the case did not result in a prosecution.
She would later claim during a Democratic forum on climate change in 2019 that she had sued Exxon Mobil, which fact checkers reported as untrue. She did obtain settlements from other oil and gas companies, including Chevron and BP, over allegations that they violated pollution laws.
In 2019, Harris joined Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to introduce legislation that would require the government to consider the impact of environmental regulations or laws on low-income communities, which tend to be disproportionately vulnerable to climate disruption because they are often located in flood zones, near highways, power plants and polluted land.
As vice president, Harris does not use the phrase “Green New Deal,” which has been relentlessly mocked by conservatives, who use it as shorthand for all climate and clean energy policies.
Her Republican opponents are not likely to let her forget it, though.
“During her ill-fated and short-lived 2020 presidential campaign, Harris was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Green New Deal and called for so-called ‘carbon neutrality’ by 2030, all of it with a $10 trillion price tag,” Daniel Turner, executive director of Power The Future, a group that advocates for fossil fuels, said in a statement.
He called Harris part of the “climate cult that calls the shots in today’s Democratic Party.”
Evergreen Action, an environmental group, endorsed Harris on Sunday. The youth-led Sunrise Movement, which last week called on Biden to end his bid for reelection, praised his decision to step away. The group did not directly endorse Harris but said any replacement must “put forth a bold vision to tackle the climate crisis and fight for our generation.”
Other organizations said they were holding back an endorsement until the Democratic nomination process is completed.