The last time Vice President Kamala Harris tried to win the White House, she staked out aggressive positions on climate change, calling for a ban on fracking, a tax on carbon pollution and $10 trillion in spending to fight global warming. But one past action stands out as something that could be both an asset to Ms. Harris as well as an albatross.
As a senator in 2019, Ms. Harris cosponsored the Green New Deal, a nonbinding resolution that was centered around the idea that addressing climate change required significant changes in the economy. It called for converting the electric grid to 100 percent clean energy this decade, declared clean air, clean water and healthy food to be basic human rights. But it also endorsed free health care and affordable housing for all Americans.
Different variations of a Green New Deal had been circulating in Europe and in progressive circles in the United States for years before Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, made a first effort to get Congress to endorse the idea. Ms. Harris joined them.
“Climate change is real, and it poses an existential threat to us as human beings, and it is within our power to do something about it,” Ms. Harris told a New Hampshire crowd in 2019 when she was seeking the Democratic nomination for president. “I am supporting the Green New Deal,” she said to thunderous applause.
Republicans framed the Green New Deal as a socialist takeover that would bankrupt the nation. They held a procedural vote in the Senate in March 2019, where it failed 0 to 57, with all Republicans voting against allowing a full vote and 43 Democrats voting “present.”
When Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee in 2020 and tapped Ms. Harris as his running mate, he distanced himself from the Green New Deal. Ms. Harris followed suit.
Now, young climate activists are hoping Ms. Harris will lean in to her progressive past. The problem is, so are Republicans. The National Republican Senatorial Committee this week issued talking points for party members calling Ms. Harris an “avowed radical” based in part on her Green New Deal support.
“She has to walk a fine line,” said David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California San Diego. He said the phrase Green New Deal has become toxic, even among many moderate and independents.
“You can talk inspirationally about climate change, but to call all that the Green New Deal is a red flag in swing states,” he said. “The job of the Democrats, if you’re going to occupy the center, is not to play into that.”
Stevie O’Hanlon, spokeswoman for the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate group, said her members want Ms. Harris to reprise her 2020 pledges. “There is no use running away from the fact that she backed the Green New Deal,” Ms. O’Hanlon said. “The Republicans are going to attack her on it and she has an opportunity to actually defend it and define it and talk about how it’s a plan to actually make life better for working people.”
The Biden administration sometimes frustrated environmentalists by allowing major fossil fuel projects to be developed, even as it took the most aggressive actions in history to cut greenhouse gases. The United States produced the most amount of crude oil last year than any nation in history and is the leading exporter of natural gas. Now, the vice president faces the challenge of defending the administration’s climate policies as she tries to chart her own path.
“We’re watching carefully over the coming days to see if and how she differentiates herself from President Biden,” Ms. O’Hanlon said. Sunrise has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate.
Many Democratic lawmakers, even those who championed the Green New Deal, said Ms. Harris should focus on her accomplishments in the Biden administration, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2022 Ms. Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in an evenly-divided Senate to pass the sweeping climate and tax law.
The Inflation Reduction Act is injecting more than $370 billion in tax incentives and subsidies into clean energy production. So far it has spurred about $488 billion in private investment in solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries and charging stations. It also has led to the creation of more than 100,000 jobs according to E2, a nonpartisan organization that tracks jobs in the renewable energy industries. The group has found that clean energy now accounts for more than 3 percent of all new jobs added every year in the United States, and creates more jobs across more occupations than almost any other sector. Many are in Republican-led states.
Mr. Trump, who has called for the repeal of the law, wants to encourage more coal, oil and gas development. The burning of those fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change.
“Republican leaders, Donald Trump, Fox News, their goal is to take away all the tax breaks, to take away all the grant programs for the solar sector in Georgia, for the construction of battery plants in red and purple states all across the country,” said Senator Markey. “From my perspective, this is a good debate to have,” he said.
According to a study published in Nature, the Green New Deal had bipartisan support when it was first proposed as a broad idea. A poll conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found 64 percent of Republican voters initially supported the blueprint for climate action and new clean energy jobs, and about 82 percent had not heard the phrase “Green New Deal.”
But Republican support plummeted after Fox News commentators repeatedly and falsely claimed the plan aimed to take away cheeseburgers, confiscate cars and ban airplane travel. The study called the phenomenon the “Fox News Effect.”
Republican analysts said the party is preparing many of the same arguments again against Ms. Harris. On the stump, Mr. Trump now labels all climate policy as the “Green New Scam.”
“Republicans fully intend to weaponize it in key Rust Belt and swing states,” said Neil Chatterjee, a former energy adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointed by Mr. Trump.
“If she doubles down and embraces the Green New Deal, it hurts her in those states, but if she back away from it, she alienates those young climate activists who she needs,” Mr. Chatterjee said. “So, it’s lose-lose.”
Ike Irby, a senior adviser to Ms. Harris, has indicated her campaign focus will be on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act.
Other early positions that Ms. Harris held could also be problematic, like calling for changing federal dietary guidelines to encourage less meat consumption. Meat and dairy production account for about 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. She also favored a ban on hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, which is the process of extracting oil or gas from shale by injecting water, sand, and sometimes chemicals at high pressure.
“We have to just acknowledge that the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the impact on the health and safety of communities,” Ms. Harris said at a CNN town hall on climate change in 2019. “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Patrick Donnelly, the Nevada political director for the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, an environmental group, said as much as he would like Ms. Harris to embrace bold positions on climate change, she needs to run a pragmatic campaign that does not alienate voters.
“She doesn’t need to be pandering to the farthest reaches of the left,” Mr. Donnelly said.
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