Is a Kamala win a win for the environment?
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President Biden made history this past weekend by dropping out of the 2024 presidential election, making history as the only president in the modern era to drop out of the race so close to the election.?
Pending a Democratic nomination win, the most likely candidate to replace Biden is current Vice President Kamala Harris. In the days following Biden’s announcement, peers, Democrat colleagues including former US President Barack Obama, and even climate organizations have publicly rallied around the vice president to support her bid for the Democratic nomination.?
Gina McCarthy, Biden’s former chief climate adviser shared about Harris “She has spent her whole life committed to justice, fighting for the underdog, and making sure that no one is above the law. She will fight every day for all Americans to have access to clean air, clean water and a healthy environment.”
Similarly, a coalition of major environmental organizations, including League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, the NRDC Action Fund, the Sierra Club Political Committee, and Clean Energy for American Action, endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination bid stating “The last three and a half years of the Biden-Harris administration could not contrast more starkly with Trump and other extreme MAGA Republicans, and the stakes for this election could not be higher,” the organizations wrote in a joint statement. “A second term would be far worse for our climate and our democracy.”
So, what would a win for Kamala Harris mean for Americans?
Kamala Harris, who is the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected as vice president, has a long history of advocating for the environment. As San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris created one of the US’s first environmental justice units. Later, as attorney general of California, Harris prosecuted polluters, securing multimillion-dollar settlements from Volkswagen for rigging vehicles with emissions-cheating software and from the oil firms Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips for environmental violations.
In her run for the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, Harris promoted a green agenda far more ambitious than Biden’s, calling for a carbon tax, a ban on fracking for oil and gas on public lands and a $10tn investment over 10 years to help combat global heating.
Most recently as vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the largest climate investment in United States history, the Inflation Reduction Act, which delivers $370 billion over 10 years into wind, solar, batteries, and electric vehicles. Biden called the bill “the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world”.
As a stark comparison, the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump couldn’t be farther in opposition from Harris. Trump has called climate change a hoax and during his term as president, the United States became the first and only country to withdraw from the global Paris Agreement. It’s been reported that Trump also “overturned an estimated 100 environmental regulations, shrank the EPA, and required that the words ‘climate change’ be removed from its website.
On the campaign trail this time around, Trump has repeatedly said one of his top priorities is to boost oil and gas production and free up more public land to “drill, baby, drill.” Trump has also indicated he and his allies aim to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and downsize the EPA.
While Trump continues to maintain distance from the controversial Project 2025, the 992-page conservative plan labeled as a playbook for Trump’s second term, it has been noted that much of the policy guide was written by people who were high-ranking officials in Trump’s administration who have been floated as top contenders for positions in a second term.?
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Although Trump personally is not among its 34 authors, according to a CNN tally more than half of the authors, editors and contributors worked in the Trump administration. Moreover, at least 140 former Trump officials are involved in Project 2025 including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and longtime adviser Stephen Miller and several lawyers deeply involved in Trump’s attempts to remain in power, such as his impeachment attorney Jay Sekulow and two of the legal architects of his failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman. Most recently Trump’s 2024 running mate JD Vance, who has made his anti-climate stance known, praised and wrote the foreword for an upcoming book penned by an architect of Project 2025. Overall, CNN found nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House and the number is likely higher because many individuals’ online resumes were not available.
With this in mind, it’s reasonable to expect that a second Trump presidency would follow many of the project’s recommendations. The plan alarmingly calls for the elimination of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, shutting down of the National Weather Service, repeal of Biden’s clean energy subsidies, and axing the National Flood Insurance Program. It also calls for drilling in the Arctic and cuts to climate change work by government agencies. That includes the U.S. Agency for International Development, which, the authors write, “should cease its war on fossil fuels in the developing world and support the responsible management of oil and gas reserves as the quickest way to end wrenching poverty and the need for open-ended foreign aid.”
Invert Insights.
?? United States residents have been experiencing several years of record breaking weather. They’ve had to face devastating wildfires, unpredictable weather including tornadoes and hurricanes, and unparalleled highs in temperatures, most of which can directly be attributed to climate change. The upcoming vote will be a pivotal moment in US history especially as it relates to the environment.
?? By all accounts, a win for Donald Trump would have a devastating and far reaching detrimental impact on any progress made towards climate goals. In contrast, a win for Kamala Harris holds the promise of meaningful and well supported climate action led by a government committed to change.
?? Regardless of who wins, the implications of the upcoming election will be felt well outside the borders of the US and it’s safe to say the world will be watching to see what’s next.?
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