Posted on 07/22/2024 5:35:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Biden has endorsed his vice president, a woman with a track record of going after fossil fuel companies.
“Kamala Harris will be the next President of the United States,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) posted on X last night, pledging full support for her fellow Democrat.
US citizens will decide in November whether that is true or not, but Harris’s chance of becoming the 47th - and first female - president of the US just shot up, after Joe Biden dropped out of the race with Republican Donald Trump yesterday.
As the world’s largest historical contributor to climate change - still the second largest today after China - America’s political direction has huge ramifications for the rest of the planet.
So unsurprisingly the vice president’s track record on climate and environmental matters is in the limelight.
With only a few months to go until the election, Harris is unlikely to move far from Biden’s platform.
She would be taking over from a president who is proud of his climate record - and rightly so according to many experts. In his letter to the nation yesterday, Biden emphasised that on his watch, America “passed the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world.”
He was referring to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) - which pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in tax subsidies and grants for renewable energy projects. Biden promised the IRA would boost green jobs, supports communities on the frontlines of pollution and more.
“Biden will leave office with the strongest climate record of any president - making the largest ever investment in clean energy, regulating to reduce pollution from cars & power plants, bolstering clean energy supply chain resilience, & reasserting US global climate leadership,” says Jason Bordoff, founding director of Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy.
On his first day as president in January 2021, Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement that his rival and predecessor Trump had taken the country out of.
Harris was right there with him (that’s the vice president’s job) and would surely take this green legacy forward. As the US’s top representative at the UN climate conference in Dubai last year, she said the world “must do more” on this vital issue.
At the same time, climate campaigners have criticised Biden’s administration for not doing more.
During his term, the US extended its lead as the world’s largest oil producer, and became the biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Many environmentalists want to see the Democrats go much further in halting fossil fuel extraction. But are agreed that another four years with Trump at the helm - beside climate sceptic running mate JD Vance - is worth uniting against.
This isn’t the first time Harris has run for president, and her short-lived 2019 bid provides some insights into her thinking - as does her record as California attorney general from 2011-2017.
In that role, she investigated ExxonMobil for misleading the public about climate change. Harris also prosecuted a pipeline company, Plains All-American Pipeline, over an oil spill off the California coast in 2015. And she secured an $86 million (€79 mn) settlement for the state from car company Volkswagen for allegations of cheating on diesel emissions tests.
Prior to that, as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004-2011, Harris created what she called the country’s first environmental justice unit to address environmental crimes (like hazardous waste dumping) against the district’s poorest residents.
"Crimes against the environment are crimes against communities, people who are often poor and disenfranchised," Harris said in 2005. "The people who live in those communities often have no other choice but to live there."
Nature restoration, rewilding and battery innovations: Positive environmental stories from 2024 Commentators hope this impressive CV, and framing of pollution as crime, indicates a willingness to get tougher with the fossil fuel industry than Biden has.
Harris’s 2019 presidential bid supports this optimism too.
Back then, she called for a climate pollution fee that would "make polluters pay for emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.” Harris also indicated that America would strengthen its enforcement and prosecution of fossil fuel companies under her leadership.
In 2020, she said she opposed fracking and offshore drilling, and would ban fossil fuel leases on public lands if president. But distanced herself from these proposals while supporting Biden.
Another notable milestone on Harris’s climate CV: while serving as a California senator in 2019, she threw her support behind the Green New Deal as an early co-sponsor.
This ambitious blueprint for a green economy, first introduced by AOC and senator Edward Markey, proposed transitioning to 100 per cent clean energy within a decade.
Climate campaigners still believe in this agenda for a just transition.
“We would fall out [of] a coconut tree for someone who ran on this,” Sunrise Movement, a coalition of young climate activists, posted yesterday, referencing a Harris quote about everyone coming from somewhere rather than simply falling from a coconut tree.
If AOC is totally for Harris then I’m definitely for her.
Plus I’ve heard Harris doesn’t smell like cabbage and urine.
Reason #1 why I voted for Trump in 2012 and 2020.
She does not meet the Natural Born Citizen requirement according to the standards recently agreed to for John McCain.
aoc for vp
I just don’t see how we make this an issue since the courts say we do not have standing. Our only chance is at the ballot box.
She stands with Satan, obviously.
Heels Up takes the positions she’s told to take.
Biden is returning to the WH. So much for his being dead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.