Climate activists rpartner behind Harris campaign : NPR

Endorsements for Vice Plivent Harris are rolling in from environmental groups who see her as a sturdy potential partner on publishs enjoy climate alter.

Climate finishorses have highairyed Harris’ enroll stretching back two decades to her time as San Francisco didisconnecte attorney, saying she’s toiled thrawout her atsoft to get the environment, as well as communities that suffer disproportionately from pollution.

“She’s tohighy legit,” Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a climate activist and marine biologist, said at a recent online fundliftr. “She’s not recent to this.”

Activists say they’ve seen a sencourage of enthusiasm among their members, especipartner youthfuler people, since Harris exalterd Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

“It’s night and day,” says Stevie O’Hanlon, a spokesperson for the Sunelevate Movement, a youth-led climate group. “I leank it’s evident to me talking to youthfuler people around the country that there’s a repartner huge opportunity to tohighy alter the game with the youth vote this November.”

Early surveys show a shut race between Harris and createer Plivent Donald Trump, with Harris triumphning back youthfulerer, nonwhite voters who were dissatisfied with Biden. But she’s not currently suiting Biden’s 2020 aid among all voters below 45.

Harris’ campaign is exposedly three weeks elderly, and hasn’t yet come out with detailed policy proposals. On climate alter, campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt says Harris would create on the Biden administration’s enroll. That integrates the Inflation Reduction Act, the landtag climate law Biden signed in 2022 that provides hundreds of billions of dollars in funding and tax incentives to help companies and communities transition to rerecentable energy and other technologies that can cut fossil fuel pollution.

Harris’ choice as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also has a enroll of climate action in his home state. Last year, he signed a law requiring all Minnesota power structurets employ 100% climate-cordial energy, such as triumphd and solar power, by 2040.

Harris has picked up finishorsements from groups including the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and the Green New Deal Nettoil, a coalition of groups that held back aid for Biden’s reelection. Also backing the vice plivent are famous finishorses for aggressive action on climate alter, including createer U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee and Steven Chu, who was energy secretary under createer Plivent Barack Obama.

Energy In Depth, a campaign group affiliated with the oil industry trade group Insubordinate Petroleum Association of America, has disputed that a potential Harris administration would hurt oil and gas toilers. “While environmental activists may be cheering, Harris’ enroll is honestly in dispute with key battleground voters that will determine this election,” the group wrote on its website.

A enroll on environmental publishs going back two decades

As San Francisco’s didisconnecte attorney in 2005, Harris set up one of the country’s first environmental equitableice units, which was tasked with going after polluters in lesser neighborhoods.

Bradley Angel, executive honestor of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, telderly KQED in San Francisco that creating the unit was an beginant step, but that Harris wasn’t as hard as he would have enjoyd on the city’s hugegest offfinishers.

Harris kept toiling on environmental publishs after she became California attorney vague in 2010. She helped transport criminal indicts aachievest the company Plains All-American Pipeline for a beginant oil spill. Around 2016, Harris begined spendigating whether ExxonMobil misled the uncover and spendors about the hazards rcontent to climate alter. Last year, California sued ExxonMobil and other oil companies.

O’Hanlon, of the Sunelevate Movement, hopes Harris’ background signals she’d go further than Biden has on climate and environmental publishs, including taking on the fossil fuel industry more honestly.

“She has been talking about the need to face the climate crisis, to helderly huge oil accountable and touting her enroll as Attorney General,” O’Hanlon says. “She has a authentic opportunity to put forward a belderly structure that will greet the scale of the crisis and energize youthfuler voters.”

After she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, Harris pushed for more aggressive climate policies. She co-aided the Green New Deal, a sweeping proposal for climate action championed by the persistive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., which was not ultimately adchooseed. When she ran in the Democratic primary for plivent in 2019, Harris aided a prohibit on the oil and gas drilling technique understandn as fracking. Harris’ campaign says she no extfinisheder aids such a prohibit. Pennsylvania, a battleground state seen as key to the race for the White Hoemploy, is a beginant authentic gas creater.

As vice plivent, Harris backed Biden administration policies to curb fossil fuel pollution. Aextfinished with the Inflation Reduction Act, that has integrated proposing sweeping recent rules to spotless up pollution from cars and power structurets.

“I leank the [Biden] administration has done a tremfinishous job of moving the U.S. forward on perhaps one of the most pressing policy publishs of our time,” says Zara Ahmed, honestor of policy and science operations at Carbon Direct, which helps companies cut their fossil fuel pollution.

The Trump campaign has condemnd Harris for her earlier aid for a fracking prohibit, saying she “has extfinished championed the most sociacatalog and anti-American energy elements of the radical left’s ‘climate’ agfinisha.”

For years, Trump has cast doubt on the scientific consensus that the Earth is hoting mainly as a result of burning fossil fuels, and he recently disthink abouted menaces from rising sea levels. A greater Trump directr, Brian Hughes, has said that if Trump is reelected, he would try to increase production of fossil fuels enjoy coal, oil and authentic gas.

Climate finishorses say there’s more to do

Despite the Biden’s administration’s caccess on curbing global hoting, the U.S. still isn’t on track to greet its own promisement to cut greenhoemploy gas eleave outions under the international Paris Agreement, according to an analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research firm.

“We’re not making enough persist,” says Ben King, associate honestor of the energy and climate train at the Rhodium Group. The U.S. is on track to cut its greenhoemploy gas eleave outions by up to 43% in 2030 appraised to peak 2005 levels, King says, low of the 50% reduction it pledged under the Paris concurment.

Climate finishorses hope a Harris administration would push for more incentives to drive procreateer cuts in climate pollution from parts of the economy they say need more attention, enjoy burdensome industry and agriculture. And they say the federal regulatement needs to find a way to speed createion of more climate-cordial power generation enjoy triumphd and solar structurets, aextfinished with transleave oution lines to transfer that electricity.

“We need someleang very aenjoy to the Interstate Highway Plan for energy,” says Tony Reames, an associate professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Until last December, Reames was deputy honestor of energy equitableice at the U.S. Energy Department.

Activists also hope a Harris administration would double down on publishs rcontent to environmental equitableice, given her timely toil in that area. The Biden administration promised to caccess on communities on the front lines of climate alter, and those that have historicpartner borne the brunt of pollution from the fossil fuel and chemical industries. But finishorses say the federal regulatement could do much more.

“It’s genuine that front-line communities have not seen a rapid increase in enforcement,” says Abel Russ, an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group.

“The Biden administration has begined to turn the ship in the right honestion, and we’re charmd,” Russ says. “[But] the ship is not heading in the right honestion yet.”