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Climate change has been a major focus of the Biden administration. Now that Vice President Harris has replaced President Biden on the ballot, what does her record tell us about what she might do in office? NPR's Michael Copley has this report.
MICHAEL COPLEY, BYLINE: Days after Kamala Harris launched her campaign, she spoke to a roaring crowd in Wisconsin, where she went after Donald Trump for courting oil executives.
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: He literally promised big oil companies - big oil lobbyists - he would do their bidding for $1 billion in campaign donations.
COPLEY: She was referring to reports first published in The Washington Post - and not independently confirmed by NPR - that Trump urged oil executives to fund his reelection because he would scrap many environmental rules. In contrast, environmentalists believe Harris would be a strong advocate for cutting fossil fuel pollution, and the endorsements have been rolling in. On a recent fundraising call, climate advocate Ayana Elizabeth Johnson said voters have a stark choice.
AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: This is a race between dangerous climate denial on the one hand - Trump - and just climate solutions on the other with Kamala Harris.
COPLEY: Johnson and others point to a record that stretches back two decades. When Harris was San Francisco's district attorney in 2005, she created one of the first environmental justice units in the country to go after polluters in poor neighborhoods. Critics say Harris could have been tougher on the biggest offenders.
When she was elected California attorney general in 2010, she continued working on environmental issues. Around 2016, she started investigating whether ExxonMobil misled the public about climate change. California sued the oil company last year. Stevie O'Hanlon is a spokesperson for the youth-led climate group the Sunrise Movement. She hopes Harris' background signals a willingness to take on the fossil fuel industry.
STEVIE O'HANLON: She has a real opportunity to put forward a bold plan that will meet the scale of the crisis and energize young voters, and she should take that opportunity.
COPLEY: A campaign group affiliated with the Independent Petroleum Association of America argues a Harris administration would hurt oil and gas workers. Harris pushed for more aggressive climate policies after she entered the U.S. Senate in 2017. She co-sponsored the Green New Deal, a sweeping proposal for climate action that wasn't ultimately adopted. And when she ran in the Democratic primary for president in 2019, she supported a ban on the oil and gas drilling technique known as fracking. Harris' campaign says she no longer supports such a ban.
And as vice president, Harris backed Biden administration policies to curb fossil fuel pollution and helped roll out the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate law that provides hundreds of billions in funding to help companies and communities transition to renewable energy. Zara Ahmed directs policy and science operations at the company Carbon Direct.
ZARA AHMED: I think the administration has done a tremendous job of moving the U.S. forward on perhaps one of the most pressing policy issues of our time.
COPLEY: Harris' campaign is just getting started and hasn't come out with detailed policy proposals. On climate, campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said Harris would look to build on the Biden administration's record. Climate activists hope that Harris would double down on issues of environmental justice, given her early work in that area.
The Biden administration promised to focus on communities that have historically borne the brunt of pollution. Abel Russ is a lawyer with the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. He says the government could do more.
ABEL RUSS: Frontline communities have not seen a rapid increase in enforcement.
COPLEY: That's something he's hoping to see from Harris. Russ says changing environmental policy is like turning an oil tanker. It takes time.
RUSS: The Biden administration has started to turn the ship in the right direction, and we're happy. The ship is not heading in the right direction yet.
COPLEY: If Harris is elected, Russ hopes people living near the chemical and fossil fuel industries could get more protection.
Michael Copley, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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