Examining Kamala Harris’ Climate Credentials

Current conditions: England’s wet and cold summer has been linked to a concerning decline in insect populations • At least 11 people died in northern China after torrential rain caused a bridge to collapse • The West Coast’s record-breaking heat wave will last at least through Wednesday.

THE TOP FIVE

1. A quick look at Kamala Harris’ climate record

President Biden announced yesterday he will not run for re-election and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, for the 2024 Democratic ticket. Tributes from his colleagues poured in quickly, with many hailing Biden’s decision as brave and patriotic, and others recounting his accomplishments during three-and-a-half years in office, including his climate record. “Biden will leave office with easily the strongest climate record of any president — and one of the stronger environmental records, generally, in decades,” wrote Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer. Biden signed the largest investment in clean energy and decarbonization in American history, oversaw a revitalization of American industrial strategy, passed the bipartisan infrastructure law and CHIPS and Science Act (both of which funded or expanded climate-friendly programs), and moved quickly to regulate greenhouse gas emissions using executive authority. “Democrats had tried and failed for 30 years to pass a climate law through the Senate,” Meyer said. “Biden succeeded.”

Would a President Harris carry on this legacy? As Bloomberg noted, her own climate agenda as a presidential candidate in 2019 was more ambitious even than Biden’s. She called for a carbon tax, a ban on fracking and fossil fuel leases on public lands, and $10 trillion in spending to curb greenhouse gas emissions. She also was an early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. She supported a pollution fee, a crackdown on fossil fuel companies, and as a top attorney in California, spearheaded several investigations into and lawsuits against major oil companies. She has also been a vocal advocate for protecting frontline and disadvantaged communities bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

2. Biden awards $4.3 billion in grants to fund community-driven climate solutions

The Biden administration this morning announced the 25 recipients of more than $4 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to “implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition.” The EPA estimates that the projects, when taken together, would have the greenhouse gas reduction potential equivalent to 971 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2050. The grants will fund projects across 30 states and one Tribe. The largest grant, of $500 million, will go to California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District project to decarbonize transportation and goods movement in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Other large-sum recipients include:

• The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ($450 million to fund heat pump installations)
• The Illinois EPA ($430 million for decarbonizing industry and buildings, freight electrification, agriculture, and renewables deployment)
• The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources ($421 million for carbon sequestration through natural and working lands)
• The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection ($396 million for industrial decarbonization)
• The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy ($300 million for climate-smart agriculture)

The CPGR program was created under the Inflation Reduction Act. EPA administrator Michael Regan said these funds would be allocated by the fall. As E&E News noted, this timeline “would make them virtually impossible for a new administration to rescind.”

3. Rivian opens EV ‘charging outpost’ near Yosemite

EV startup Rivian opened a first-of-its-kind “charging outpost” – or, as Engadget calls it, a “crunchy not-gas station.” It’s a rest stop, basically, but instead of filling up with gas you top up your EV charge and get a chance to use the bathroom, grab some snacks, and even do some reading at the onsite library. The outpost, which has five DC fast chargers, is located about 24 miles outside of Yosemite National Park in Groveland, California, and sits on the site of an old gas station. It’s the first of what Rivian hopes will be many such EV rest stops near national parks and other high-traffic areas.

Rivian

4. Azerbaijan suggests fossil fuel extraction can continue under Paris Agreement

Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s COP29 climate summit, has set up an international fund to pool money from polluting countries and governments to help poorer countries adapt and build resilience to the climate crisis. Contributions to the “Climate Finance Action Fund” will be voluntary and will only go ahead if pledges reach $1 billion collectively between at least 10 countries. Meanwhile, “negotiations on the core outcome of the summit — a new, large-scale financial aid target to support climate action in developing countries — remain deadlocked,” Politico reported. The fund is one of 14 non-binding initiatives Azerbaijan announced on Friday, none of which “directly address” fossil fuel use. At a press conference on the same day, the summit’s chief executive Elnur Soltanov suggested that reducing fossil fuel extraction was not necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. “We should somehow delineate between a 1.5C alignment and this view about hydrocarbons,” Soltanov said. Azerbaijan is heavily dependent on income from fossil fuels, which make up more than 90% of its exports.

5. Trump says he is ‘totally for’ EVs

Former President Donald Trump over the weekend changed his tone slightly on electric vehicles, telling a crowd at a rally in Michigan that he’s “totally for” EVs so long as they don’t make up 100% of the market. He said something similar at an event last month, announcing he was a “big fan” of EVs: “I think a lot of people are going to want to buy electric cars but…if you want to buy a different type of car you have to have a choice—some people need to go far.”

Trump has repeatedly vowed to end the (non-existent) EV “mandate” if he’s elected in November and has a history of complaining that EVs run out of battery. A report in The Wall Street Journal suggests his blossoming “bromance” with Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be inspiring the messaging shift. The two men have reportedly been chatting behind the scenes, and Musk has endorsed Trump. “He’s very nice when he calls,” Musk told an investor recently, adding that he can be very persuasive. “I was like, you know, electric cars I think are pretty good for the future, America’s the leader in electric cars…buy America.” At the Michigan event over the weekend Trump said he “loves” Elon.

THE KICKER

“We can turn a wrench in an oil and gas field to reduce methane emissions. There’s no wrench we can turn to slow emissions from the Amazon or permafrost.” –Rob Jackson, author of a new book on climate solutions called Into the Clear Blue Sky