Kamala Harris avoids getting specific on climate change — for now

Harris has backed away from past climate policies to avoid breaking with Biden. How long will that last?

What would a Harris-Walz administration actually look like?

As the Democratic National Convention enters its final day on Thursday and the vibes-heavy launch of the Harris campaign formally enters the general election stretch, journalists are increasingly putting the pressure on Kamala Harris and her campaign to lay out a four-year policy agenda — with specifics. It’s a somewhat unequal ask of Harris, given that her opponent, Donald Trump, rarely faces in-depth questions about the feasibility of the policies he regularly suggests at his rallies.

Climate change, though not at the top of mind for the national press, is certainly one of those issues where Harris and her running mate will eventually have to lay out her vision, especially as the US remains publicly committed to reducing emissions with the goal of curbing rising global temperatures. It was one of the themes set to be centered by speakers on the final of the Democratic convention, according to a schedule leaked to NPR which included Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and West Virginia-based content creator John Russell, a booster of clean energy through his social media accounts.

To be clear, it’s not like there are going to be any big surprises in this particular arena. The Trump campaign, for example, is running a typically conservative-coded playbook on the twin issues of climate and energy policy. Trump himself has resurrected the “drill baby, drill!” chant first brought to the political stage by Sarah Palin and her Tea Party-adjacent followers during the McCain campaign in 2008. And his do-the-opposite-of-the-Democrats strategy of governance largely defined his first term in the White House, including his decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Accords (which Joe Biden re-joined in 2021).

As the 2024 race has progressed, Trump’s outreach to the climate-denier right has taken on a new angle: desperation. His legal fees continue to mount as a result of a criminal conviction on 34 felony counts in New York which he is appealing, as well as two other criminal cases he is actively battling and one in Florida which the Department of Justice is hoping to revive on appeal. The rising costs of his legal representation have led to Trump making widely reported overtures to big money donors like Miriam Adelson, a GOP megadonor and casino mogul, as well as a play for money from oil and gas CEOs with an explicit promise to curb the growth of the EV sector if elected president.

If there are any notable developments on the climate front over the next few months, it will not be the result of Harris distinguishing herself from her opponent, but rather from Joe Biden, who stepped aside to clear a path for her to succeed him last month.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz headline a campaign rally in Milwaukee as the Democratic National Convention plays out in Chicago (Middle East Images/AFP via Getty)

Any differences between the two Democrats in the White House that do emerge in the weeks ahead may, more than anything else, be representative of the deep gulf in age between Biden and his vice president, as well as Harris’s own style of politics born out of her work as a prosecutor.

Biden is no conservative when it comes to climate policy. His decision to readmit the US into the climate accord abandoned by Trump was just the beginning of a green legacy that has also included tax credits for purchases of electric vehicles and the largest dollar investment in fighting climate change under any administration in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided clean energy tax credits and incentivized a surge of green energy projects around the country. But he’s no progressive, either. He resisted calls for a ban on offshore drilling, and has also surged gas and oil drilling leases on federal land at a rate that has outpaced Donald Trump’s administration.

So what can we glean from what little Kamala Harris has said (so far) about her planned climate agenda? And what other clues can we pick up regarding her policies from her selection of Tim Walz as her vice president?

For now, it appears that Harris is in no rush to develop any daylight between herself and the president. That was clear over the weekend when her campaign made it official: Harris, her advisers said, no longer supports a ban on fracking natural gas or offshore drilling. Both are stances which will disappoint progressives in her party, and are aimed at winning over voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest — a survey from Oceana this month found that as many as six in ten Americans oppose new offshore oil drilling enterprises, including seven in ten Americans under 30.

Harris was the Biden administration’s representative at the UN’s COP28 climate summit in December of 2023 (AFP via Getty Images)

But even with that announcement, Harris could represent a step forward for Americans who want to see serious progress made in battling rising global temperatures. Some are looking at the vice president’s climate policy in the same vein as ardent Gaza ceasefire supporters are viewing her policy on Israel and its war against Hamas; they do not see Harris making meaningful efforts to undercut Biden by staking out her own position, while at the same time they acknowledge that her team seems, at least on a surface level, more receptive than Biden’s to pleas from activists and outside experts.

Perhaps underlining that view, things reached a head on Thursday as Palestinian-American DNC delegates and their allies staged a sit-in outside the United Center, demanding a stage speech slot. One of their most vocal supporters on Twitter was the Sunrise Movement, a progressive climate group known for its members’ willingness to directly pressure Democratic electeds.

Harris’s running-mate selection has, so far, been the clearest window into what her policies will look like, with the exception of an economic agenda she laid out at an event in North Carolina.

The vice president’s final reported choice for her own veep came down to Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, who has made history as a governor of an energy-producing state pursuing an ambitious emissions agenda, and Tim Walz, her eventual pick, who has gone even further. Walz is a long-standing ally of climate change activists and has whole-heartedly embraced Joe Biden’s EV push in his state. He’s also put Minnesota on a plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at an event in Minnesota in 2023 focused on the Biden-Harris administration’s electric vehicle push (AFP via Getty Images)

Even as Harris moderates her rhetoric on energy policy heading into the general election, it’s clear that her party’s younger generations are increasingly eager to pursue pro-climate policies even in states and regions where they’ve been historically unpopular. How much that would manifest in a second Harris term is still purely hypothetical, but climate advocates are signaling optimism.

“The 2024 election is a fight for our basic freedoms. Kamala Harris will protect our freedom to clean air, clean water, and a healthy climate, while Donald Trump wants to sell off our progress to the highest bidder,” Lori Lodes, Executive Director of Climate Power, said in a statement.

“Kamala Harris spent her entire career putting people first and holding corporate polluters accountable. Donald Trump is begging oil and gas executives for $1 billion and promising to gut climate progress to pad their bottom line. We can’t afford another four years of climate denial, and we will not go back.”

Given the wide disparity in views on climate policy between Harris and Trump, it’s no surprise that even the more progressive climate groups are firmly behind Harris’s campaign — the risk of Trump undoing four years of progress, albeit less than they would have hoped for, is too great. One of those groups, Sunrise Movement, has already announced general election phone banking for Harris, even as the group issued a statement on the first night of the DNC calling on Democrats to center a pro-climate agenda with greater emphasis as the convention progressed.

Other groups agree: “There’s a moment here and we think she’s got to seize it,” Saul Levin, political director of Green New Deal Network, told The Guardian.

With her party’s last big piece of climate legislation firmly in the rear-view mirror, the pressure will likely grow for Harris to enunciate what her own green agenda will look like as Election Day draws closer. Don’t expect the green left to stay quiet for long; as Biden increasingly becomes shunted to the sidelines, the calls will grow for Harris to embrace her own path forward, both for her administration and her party.