Climate experts lament Harris’s vow to keep fracking in debate with ‘walking oil spill’ Trump

Donald Trump visits the Double Eagle Energy Oil Rig in Midland, Texas, on 29 July 2020. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

Kamala Harris stridently backed new fracking and expanded US gas production in comments that raised eyebrows among some environmentalists as, yet again, the unfolding climate crisis was largely overlooked during a set piece presidential debate.

Harris, in a televised debate with Donald Trump on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, rebuffed the former president’s claim that she will end fracking “on day one” if elected by touting booming levels of drilling during her term as vice-president, in which US oil and gas production has hit record highs.

“I will not ban fracking,” Harris said, dismissing a past campaign promise to do so. “In fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking. My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”

Harris pointed to “increased domestic gas production to historic levels” and that “we have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over-rely on foreign oil”.

Regardless of the calculations of winning over moderate US voters in battleground states, scientists are clear that the use of fossil fuels, including oil and gas obtained through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, needs to be drastically cut if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The US, along with countries around the world, has committed to not breach a global temperature increase of 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial times, a threshold that is likely to be breached within a decade amid ongoing record-breaking temperatures.

Some green groups, many of which have enthusiastically endorsed Harris as the Democratic nominee, were left disappointed by her strong embrace of fracking, which was similar in tone to the “all of the above” energy rhetoric common during Barack Obama’s presidency, since which alarm has mounted over climate breakdown.

“Both candidates bragged about their support for fracking and record fossil fuel production – dangerous positions that will keep us on the path towards catastrophic climate impacts and continue exposing frontline communities to deadly levels of fossil fuel pollution,” said Allie Rosenbluth, campaign manager at Oil Change US.

Rosenbluth said nothing less was expected from Trump, who she called a “walking oil spill”, but that Harris needed a better message: “We need a climate president, one who will invest in clean energy, end fossil fuel subsidies, and phase out fossil fuels to protect the communities most exposed to oil and gas pollution and the climate crisis. It’s time for Harris to show she can be that president.”

Harris has a strongly progressive record, as a former attorney general of California, on taking on oil companies and pushing for climate policies and her shift on fracking is probably a pragmatic calculation to assuage voters in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, a gas industry hotspot (even though clean energy industries employ eight times more workers than the state’s gas sector).

In 2016, Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic nominee for president, had to apologize after saying that “we’re going to put a lot of coalminers and coal companies out of business” and Harris has been keen to avoid a repeated tripwire of controversy that could be stoked by Trump.

Much like in previous presidential debates, the climate crisis was largely ignored, with the ABC moderators only putting a question on the issue near the end after the candidates had discussed debunked allegations about migrants eating pets and Trump’s comments about Harris’s racial identity. During the 90-minute debate, the word “climate” was uttered just four times, three of these times being from the moderators themselves.

This is despite, yet again, the current year being on track to be the hottest ever recorded amid ongoing destruction to Americans’ lives from fiercer storms, heatwaves and other impacts. About two-thirds of US voters are at least somewhat concerned about climate change, polling shows, with a similar proportion backing policies that increase renewables and phase out fossil fuels.

Harris did attack Trump for infamously calling the climate crisis a “hoax” and pointed to the enormous investment and jobs numbers that have flowed from the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed by Democratic votes in Congress and signed by Joe Biden in 2022.

“You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up,” Harris said.

“You ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go. We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care deeply about this issue.”

Trump, who has vowed to rescind the climate bill, accelerate oil and gas drilling and scrap measures to encourage Americans to drive electric cars, said that “oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead” if Harris wins.

“We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out,” he added. “You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I’m a big fan of solar. But they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil …” before trailing off.

In response to the question about climate change, Trump gave a rambling, incoherent answer filled with non sequiturs that made no mention of a crisis that he has recently said would help create new beachfront property.

“What they’ve done to business and manufacturing in this country is horrible,” he said when asked about climate.

“We have nothing because they refuse, you know, Biden doesn’t go after people because supposedly China paid him millions of dollars. He’s afraid to do it. Between him and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine. They get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder why is he so loyal to this one, that one Ukraine, China? Why is he? Why did he get $3.5m from the mayor of Moscow’s wife? Why did he get – why did she pay him $3.5m? This is a crooked administration, and they’re selling our country down the tubes.”

For many climate advocates, the choice regardless of the debate is still stark. “In a week when extreme heat, wildfires and hurricanes are threatening Americans across the country, Kamala Harris stood out on the debate stage as the only candidate who will act on climate,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power.

“Donald Trump, a climate denier who has promised to be a dictator on day one to do the bidding of the oil and gas industry, only cares about himself and his big oil donors.”