Environmental activists urge Kamala Harris to go big on climate: ‘She’s got to seize the moment’

Kamala Harris during a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday. Photograph: Kyle Mazza/Rex/Shutterstock

As Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of waging “war on American energy”, some advocates are pressing the vice-president to embrace a bold climate message at the Democratic national convention this week.

Harris will have a major opportunity to lay out her key platform as she accepts the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Thursday evening. Some are hoping climate features heavily in her speech.

“There’s a moment here and we think she’s got to seize it,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.

Harris’s candidacy has excited much of the climate movement, with scores of green groups, including Levin’s, endorsing her presidential run. At a Wednesday meeting, influential climate hawks such as Ed Markey, the Massachusetts senator; Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator; and Robert Bullard, the esteemed environmental justice scholar and advocate encouraged climate voters to stand behind Harris.

But Harris has yet to release an official plan to take on the climate crisis. Unlike Joe Biden, who placed climate at the heart of his 2020 presidential run, Harris has so far only mentioned the issue in passing on the campaign trail. And though the issue has been woven into Democratic national convention events, it has not yet been a central focus of the convention.

“It’s a bit of a bummer that it hasn’t gotten more time,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay Campaign, which focuses on climate accountability.

Harris may find it difficult to make bold climate promises amid Trump’s attacks. At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania this week, the former president called Harris a “non-fracker”, though she has distanced herself from past support for a fracking ban, disappointing climate advocates.

Trump has also repeatedly claimed Harris wants to ban red meat and “get rid of all cows”. In response, she said she enjoys eating the occasional cheeseburger but added that Americans should be incentivized to eat a lower-carbon, healthier diet.

Amid this pressure from the right, some climate advocates have said they will stand behind Harris no matter how much she mentions climate.

“Regardless of whether this issue is in the speech or not tomorrow night, we know Vice-President Harris is an environmental champion,” said Michelle Deatrick, who chairs the Democratic National Committee’ Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis. She said Harris’s record speaks for itself.

Recent polling from progressive group Data for Progress and environmental organization Climate Power shows that a strong majority of US voters prefer Harris’s approach to climate.

It’s an indicator that focusing on climate is “good politics”, said Stevie O’Hanlon, spokesperson for the youth-led environmental justice group the Sunrise Movement.

“Climate is one of the issues where voters trust Harris the most over Trump,” she said. “To capitalize on that, she needs to talk about it.”

An ‘existential threat’

The 2024 Democratic party platform approved on Monday refers to the climate crisis as an “existential threat” and “a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil”.

It also includes a commitment to “making polluters pay”. It’s something DiPaola said she was “stoked” to see, though she added that she’d eventually like to see “less vague language about how they’re going to make climate accountability real”.

Additionally, the platform underlines the creation of hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs and highlights the historic green investments spurred by the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

But Levin says he hopes Harris lays out plans to go beyond the IRA and increase investments in green jobs, public transit and renewable power. Though the bill constitutes the largest downpayment on climate policy in US history with hundreds of billions of dollars in green funding, experts say that is a fraction of what the US must ultimately spend.

“We can’t just say, oh, we did the IRA, so we did climate and now let’s move to another issue,” said Levin. “The IRA made tremendous progress, but it was just a start.”

He said some aspects of the platform, including pledges to double funding for public transit and cut down public subsidies for oil companies, inspired hope that a bolder climate platform will emerge.

That platform and Harris’ rhetoric, said DiPaola, should lean “populist,” said DiPaola.

“Voters are frustrated with corporate power and influence,” she said. “She can ultimately appeal to both climate-motivated voters as well as economically motivated voters … by highlighting the need to clamp down on big oil’s greed.”

‘Big oil’s hold on our economy’

Though the Democratic party platform rails against “big oil’s hold on our economy”, the Democratic convention itself has not been unfriendly to the industry. The American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest fossil fuel lobby group, participated in several events this week.

Oil major ExxonMobil sponsored two Wednesday panel discussions hosted by Punchbowl News on the sidelines of the convention, one of which featured the firm’s senior director of climate strategy and technology and a representative from gas lobby group the American Gas Association.

Activists with environmental non-profits including Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International, and Climate Hawks Vote disrupted the event.

“I am here because Exxon lied and people died,” chanted RL Miller, the Climate Hawks Vote founder and a former Democratic National Committee member, before being escorted from the room.

Federal data shows Exxon has poured $111,500 into Republican congressional campaign committees. Collin Rees of Oil Change International, who took part in the protest, said if the party is looking to take on big oil, the company “should have no platform at the DNC”.

War in Gaza

Gaza solidarity protesters interrupted a meeting of the environment and climate crisis council at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.

“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Jamie Raskin, the Maryland representative, who had been speaking. “Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump … so cut it out.”

Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by issuing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement.

“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said O’Hanlon. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.”