Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

We Got a Real Conversation About Energy Policy at the Debate

Kamala Harris says it again: She won’t ban fracking.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

About 40 minutes into the first (and perhaps only) debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the vice president was asked about her changing stances on a variety of issues since her ill-fated 2019 run for president — in particular, her previous vow to ban fracking.

Debating in Pennsylvania, the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer, Harris stated that she no longer supports this ban. “I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States, and in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking,” she said, much as she put it on CNN recently. She went on, though: “My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” Harris said. “We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot rely on foreign oil.”

The Harris campaign capitalized on this moment to post a chart on X showing the increase in average monthly energy production under the Biden administration compared to Trump’s, citing data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Trump wasn’t buying Harris’ about-face, though, claiming Harris will “never allow fracking in Pennsylvania.” He went on to say that when Democrats took over in 2020, they tried to “get rid” of oil production, tying this to the increase in gasoline prices.

The U.S. has been the world’s largest producer of natural gas since 2011 and the largest producer of petroleum since 2018. Biden’s presidency has seen a boom in all types of U.S. energy production, including renewables.

Since Harris joined the Biden ticket 2020, she has distanced herself from her previous stance on fracking, particularly her comment in a 2019 CNN town hall that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

Much of the increase in oil prices during the Biden administration came from supply chain disruptions in the wake of Covid, when demand and thus production plummeted, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a price spike as Biden banned imports of Russian oil and natural gas. (Oil prices currently are near a three-year low.) Harris is correct that the IRA did indeed open up new leases for fossil fuels — the law now requires the government to hold auctions for millions of acres of onshore and offshore oil and gas leases prior to opening auctions for renewables. Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia and the deciding vote on the IRA, has even boasted that the legislation has allowed the U.S. to produce fossil fuels at record levels.

Whether or not this is something to brag about is something Democrats will have to decide amongst themselves. But for the purpose of this debate, Harris hopes it’s enough to assure swing state voters that she’s no climate absolutist — and that, as of now at least, oil and fossil fuels are far from dead.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Economy

AM Briefing: Liberation Day

On trade turbulence, special election results, and HHS cuts

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Loom
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A rare wildfire alert has been issued for London this week due to strong winds and unseasonably high temperatures • Schools are closed on the Greek islands of Mykonos and Paros after a storm caused intense flooding • Nearly 50 million people in the central U.S. are at risk of tornadoes, hail, and historic levels of rain today as a severe weather system barrels across the country.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump to roll out broad new tariffs

President Trump today will outline sweeping new tariffs on foreign imports during a “Liberation Day” speech in the White House Rose Garden scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Details on the levies remain scarce. Trump has floated the idea that they will be “reciprocal” against countries that impose fees on U.S. goods, though the predominant rumor is that he could impose an across-the-board 20% tariff. The tariffs will be in addition to those already announced on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum, energy imports from Canada, and a 25% fee on imported vehicles, the latter of which comes into effect Thursday. “The tariffs are expected to disrupt the global trade in clean technologies, from electric cars to the materials used to build wind turbines,” explained Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. “And as clean technology becomes more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., other nations – particularly China – are likely to step up to fill in any gaps.” The trade turbulence will also disrupt the U.S. natural gas market, with domestic supply expected to tighten, and utility prices to rise. This could “accelerate the uptake of coal instead of gas, and result in a swell in U.S. power emissions that could accelerate climate change,” Reutersreported.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Podcast

The Least-Noticed Climate Scandal of the Trump Administration

Rob and Jesse catch up on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund with former White House official Kristina Costa.

Lee Zeldin.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $27 billion to build a new kind of climate institution in America — a network of national green banks that could lend money to companies, states, schools, churches, and housing developers to build more clean energy and deploy more next-generation energy technology around the country.

It was an innovative and untested program. And the Trump administration is desperately trying to block it. Since February, Trump’s criminal justice appointees — led by Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — have tried to use criminal law to undo the program. After failing to get the FBI and Justice Department to block the flow of funds, Trump officials have successfully gotten the program’s bank partner to freeze relevant money. The new green banks have sued to gain access to the money.

Keep reading...Show less
Adaptation

Funding Cuts Are Killing Small Farmers’ Trust in Climate Policy

That trust was hard won — and it won’t be easily regained.

A barn.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Spring — as even children know — is the season for planting. But across the country, tens of thousands of farmers who bought seeds with the help of Department of Agriculture grants are hesitating over whether or not to put them in the ground. Their contractually owed payments, processed through programs created under the Biden administration, have been put on pause by the Trump administration, leaving the farmers anxious about how to proceed.

Also anxious are staff at the sustainability and conservation-focused nonprofits that provided technical support and enrollment assistance for these grants, many of whom worry that the USDA grant pause could undermine the trust they’ve carefully built with farmers over years of outreach. Though enrollment in the programs was voluntary, the grants were formulated to serve the Biden administration’s Justice40 priority of investing in underserved and minority communities. Those same communities tend to be wary of collaborating with the USDA due to its history of overlooking small and family farms, which make up 90% of the farms in the U.S. and are more likely to be women- or minority-owned, in favor of large operations, as well as its pattern of disproportionately denying loans to Black farmers. The Biden administration had counted on nonprofits to leverage their relationships with farmers in order to bring them onto the projects.

Keep reading...Show less
Green