Although President Joe Biden backed out of the presidential race just one week ago, the political landscape for the 2024 election has completely transformed. Kamala Harris, the current Vice President of the United States, is receiving a lot of attention as the new Democratic candidate and has been endorsed by many prominent figures, including President Biden and former President Obama. As a candidate for presidency, she has the potential to play a major role in how the country handles climate change. Harris claims that she is concerned about global warming and would use her power to address it, unlike the popular Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who pulled the US from the Paris climate agreement during his presidency and has stated that he intends to again upon reelection.

Vice President Harris has been pretty vocal about the environment for many years, in many cases to a more extreme extent than President Biden. Harris has also spoken out against fracking despite Biden’s disagreement. As California’s attorney general, she achieved settlements from fossil fuel companies such as Chevron and BP, though she did falsely claim once that she sued Exxon Mobil, but in reality, the investigation did not conclude with prosecution. In 2016, she joined an effort to persecute those responsible for an oil pipeline that contaminated about 100 miles of beaches in California, and supported the adoption of electric school buses as senator of California. When running in the 2020 presidential election, she called for a Green New Deal, explaining the importance of setting climate goals, even if not all of them are met. This plan would include $10 trillion to combat climate change and a carbon tax.  She eventually dropped out of the race, but many elements of the plan found their place in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which she approved with a tie-breaking vote.

Although it is yet to be determined how likely her shot at the presidency is, Kamala Harris would certainly be a better choice for the environment than her Republican opponent. According to two attendants of a dinner event hosted by Trump, the former President asked the oil industry for $1 billion in donations for his plan to reverse the environmental progress made during Biden’s presidency. Only time will tell who will win the election this November, and how they decide to wield the power they are given. Either way, the more attention that voters pay to climate change, the more pressure politicians will feel to address it.

Something Kamala said that resonated with me is that she “care[s] about the environment not because [she has] any particular desire to hug a tree, but [she has] a strong desire to hug a healthy baby.” Personally, I have no desire to hug either, but I appreciate both her sentiment and the way she expressed it in a simple way that appeals to individuals that don’t consider themselves environmentalists. Advocating for the environment obviously gets support from environmentalists, but emphasizing how climate change can impact more personal factors like our future children can help reach other audiences. I personally relate to this frame of thinking, because I care a lot about the environment, but as many of my friends can tell you, I don’t have a particular connection to nature. Global warming may involve the forests and streams, but it stands to inflict irreversible damage to the Earth, ruining countless lives in the process, many of which are minorities and low-income communities. That’s what I value most.

I’m not too sure how to feel about the Vice President and her chances in this year’s election, but I’m hopeful, at least more than I was with Biden. She has been gaining a lot of traction in younger audiences due to the coconut tree meme and some very adept social media managers, so I hope that she can encourage young adults to vote. I’m not sure how our electoral college feels about her, either, but I guess we’ll see.

I don’t intend on becoming an inherently political platform, but I will be posting an article about California’s Proposition 4 before the election, which has some environmental implications. It’s kind of difficult to talk about the environment without discussing politics, but I guess that goes for everything. Turns out everything is political. Stay tuned to learn with me!

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/ – The New York Times is known for a “high” factual reporting

Kamala Harris’s Environmental and Climate Record, in Her Own Words

Kamala Harris’s Environmental and Climate Record, in Her Own Words

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/insideclimate-news/ – InsideClimate News is known for a “high” factual reporting