(Bloomberg) — Among the Democrats who praised their party’s achievements in the fight against climate change at their convention in Chicago, there was one major exception: Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Harris and other prime-time speakers, including her running mate Tim Walz, largely shied away from highlighting the current White House’s green accomplishments – or even the hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in planned projects tied to those policies.
The importance of curbing global warming was mentioned only in passing when Harris officially accepted her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate on Thursday evening.
The freedoms at stake in the November election include “breathing clean air and drinking clean water and living free from the pollution that is exacerbating the climate crisis,” Harris said.
The decision to largely ignore the climate issue – while witnessing a surge in clean energy investment that could prove to be one of the most lasting achievements of President Joe Biden’s administration – disappointed advocacy groups that had been looking for clearer signals about Harris’ intentions.
“Harris’ extremely brief mention of climate change” during her speech “capped a week in which the climate crisis was shockingly absent from Chicago,” said Collin Rees, policy director at Oil Change US, which advocates for a faster phase-out of fossil fuels. “We need concrete, specific commitments.”
For the presidential candidate, the decision to remain largely silent could be a strategic one. While climate activism can mobilize young voters, it also runs the risk of alienating potential supporters in the gas-rich swing state of Pennsylvania, says Kevin Book, managing director of the Washington-based consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC.
Her opponent, Donald Trump, ruthlessly attacked Harris’ stance on fossil fuels. Speaking to a crowd in York, Pennsylvania, earlier this week, he said that if she were elected, energy prices would “quadruple” and the US would not produce “a drop of oil”.
During her short-lived 2019 presidential campaign, Harris called for a ban on fracking, the technique used to extract most of the U.S.’s onshore oil and gas. Harris’ presidential candidate has said she will not ban the practice and insists Trump’s claims are “a blatant attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.”
As vice president, Harris used her tiebreaker vote to ensure that the Senate passed the comprehensive tax and climate bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act. At the same time, the Biden-Harris administration also passed regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Before Harris’ speech on the last evening of the congress in Chicago, the organizers had dedicated a 13-minute section to the climate issue. “An American president must lead the world in the fight against climate change,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told the audience. “Kamala Harris understands this task.”
Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida highlighted Harris’ environmental credentials, including her past as California attorney general, in which she criticized major oil producers.
Harris and Biden “have proven that tackling this crisis creates jobs, that investing in clean energy protects our health, and that investing in public transit builds strong communities,” Frost said. “Fighting the climate crisis is patriotic.”
Other environmentalists aren’t worried that climate change wasn’t a focus in Chicago. After all, Harris hasn’t laid out detailed plans on a number of issues, and the DNC’s prime-time program was designed to introduce her and Walz to the nation rather than go into specifics.
The convention stage is not the forum for fine details, says RL Miller, a delegate from California and chairman of Climate Hawks Vote Political Action, an organization that supports candidates committed to decisive action on global warming.
“This is a place for democratic enthusiasm,” she said. “Not for political freaks.”
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