Kamala Harris spoke out strongly in favor of new fracking tools and an expansion of U.S. gas production. Her comments raised eyebrows among some environmentalists, while the spreading climate crisis was once again largely overlooked during a staged presidential debate.
Harris, in a televised debate with Donald Trump in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, rejected the former president’s claim that if elected she would end fracking “on day one,” citing a boom in drilling during her tenure as vice president in which oil and gas production in the United States reached record highs.
“I will not ban fracking,” Harris said, reversing an earlier campaign promise to do so. “In fact, I was the deciding vote on the Inflation Mitigation Act that opened up new leases for fracking. My position is that we need to invest in diverse energy sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”
Harris pointed to the “increase in domestic gas production to historic levels” and that “we have seen the largest increase in domestic oil production in history, and that’s because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot rely too heavily on foreign oil.”
Regardless of the calculations used to win over moderate voters in swing states, scientists are clear that the use of fossil fuels – including oil and gas extracted through fracking – must be drastically reduced if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
The United States, along with other countries around the world, has committed to limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Given ongoing record temperatures, this limit is likely to be exceeded within a decade.
Some environmental groups, many of which enthusiastically supported Harris as the Democratic nominee, expressed disappointment at her strong commitment to fracking, which sounded similar to the “anything goes” rhetoric on energy policy during Barack Obama’s presidency, as concerns about climate change grew.
“Both candidates boasted about their support for fracking and their record fossil fuel production – dangerous positions that keep us on a path to catastrophic climate impacts and continue to expose frontline communities to deadly levels of fossil fuel pollution,” said Allie Rosenbluth, campaign manager at Oil Change US.
Rosenbluth said nothing less was expected from Trump, whom she called a “walking oil spill,” but Harris needs a better message: “We need a climate president, one who invests in clean energy, ends fossil fuel subsidies and phases out fossil fuel use to protect the communities most vulnerable to oil and gas pollution and the climate crisis. It’s time for Harris to show she can be that president.”
Harris, a former California attorney general, has a highly progressive record when it comes to fighting oil companies and pushing for climate policy. Her shift in policy on fracking is likely a pragmatic calculation to appease voters in key swing states like Pennsylvania, a hotbed of the gas industry (even though the clean energy industry employs eight times more workers than the state’s gas sector).
In 2016, then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was forced to apologize after declaring, “We’re going to bankrupt a lot of miners and coal companies,” and Harris is keen to avoid another controversy that Trump could further stoke.
As in previous presidential debates, the climate crisis was largely ignored. ABC moderators did not ask a question about the issue until near the end, after the candidates had discussed debunked allegations that migrants eat pets and Trump’s comments about Harris’ ethnic identity. During the 90-minute debate, the word “climate” was uttered only four times, three of them by the moderators themselves.
This is despite the fact that this year is once again threatening to be the hottest on record and Americans’ lives continue to be devastated by more severe storms, heat waves and other impacts. Polls show that about two-thirds of U.S. voters are at least somewhat concerned about climate change, and a similar share support measures to increase renewable energy and phase out fossil fuels.
Harris, however, attacked Trump for infamously calling the climate crisis a “hoax” and pointed to the huge investment and employment figures achieved by the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed with the votes of Democrats in Congress and signed by Joe Biden in 2022.
“Ask anyone who lives in a state that has experienced these extreme weather events who is now either being denied home insurance or who is being blamed,” Harris said.
“Ask anyone who has been a victim of this disaster what it means to lose your home and have nowhere to go. We know that we can actually solve this problem. This is a problem that is very important to young people in America.”
Trump has vowed to roll back climate legislation, accelerate oil and gas production and repeal measures designed to encourage Americans to drive electric cars. He said that if Harris wins the election, “there will be no oil and no fossil fuels.”
“We’re going to go back to windmills and we’re going to go back to solar energy, where you need a whole desert to generate energy,” he added. “Have you ever seen a solar power plant? I’m a big fan of solar energy, by the way. But it takes 400, 500 acres of desert soil…” before trailing off.
When asked about climate change, Trump gave a rambling, incoherent answer full of non sequiturs and made no mention of a crisis that he recently said would contribute to the creation of new beachfront property.
“What they have done to the economy and manufacturing in this country is terrible,” he said when asked about the climate.
“We have nothing because they refuse. Biden is not going after people because China allegedly paid him millions of dollars. He’s afraid of it. He and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine. They get all this money from all these different countries. And then you wonder why he’s so loyal to this one, to Ukraine, to China. Why is he? Why did he get $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow? Why did he – why did she pay him $3.5 million? This is a corrupt government, and they’re selling out our country.”
For many climate activists, the decision is still difficult, despite the debate. “In a week when extreme heat, wildfires and hurricanes threaten Americans across the country, Kamala Harris stood out on the debate stage as the only candidate who will take action on climate,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power.
“Donald Trump, a climate change denier who has promised to be a dictator from day one who follows the orders of the oil and gas industry, cares only about himself and his big oil donors.”
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