As Election Day 2024 approaches, there is no former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris have released plans to address climate change or energy policy. Campaign speeches, party platforms and track records in office give voters little guidance on what to expect from a Harris or Trump administration.
Public records show that the two have different views on climate. Trump has in the past called climate change a “hoax” and more recently, he told Elon Musk in an interview in August that the biggest threat to the world “is not global warming, where the oceans will rise eight times of an inch in 400 years next.” (In fact, a 2022 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests on the US coastsea ​​level could rise two feet or more by 2100.)
The former president said increasing oil and gas production would make the U.S. the world’s top energy producer. “Drill, baby, drill,” he often said at campaign rallies.
Harris has spoken of the threat of climate change and the damage to communities and families from more severe weather — floods, hurricanes and wildfires — “has been devastating.” “I’ve always believed, and I’ve worked hard, that the climate crisis is real,” he told CNN in an interview.
“Vice President Harris is focused on a future where all Americans have clean air, clean water, and reliable and affordable energy,” said Seth Schuster, Harris campaign spokesman.
As vice president, Harris favored a shift to a “clean energy economy” while not backing away from oil and gas, as recent comments on CNN showed. he won’t ban fracking as president. He ignored the issue, careful not to alienate voters in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s top natural gas producers.
Here, the two candidates stand on some key climate issues.
Donald Trump’s stance on climate change
Trump has said he will roll back parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping set of proposals to expand clean energy that Biden championed. He has also targeted the Green New Deal, which he derides as the “Green New Scam.”
The Green New Deal is non-binding proposal set to address climate change introduced in 2019 by progressive Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts. The resolution has not yet passed, but even if it does, none of it will carry the force of law.
On the oil and gas front, Trump has promised to unlock new land for drilling, speed up drilling permits and expedite natural gas pipeline approvals, among other initiatives. He also said he would restart exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, on his first day back in office, according to a report by Politico. President Biden paused LNG exports in January, a move that was later blocked by a federal judge.
As president, Trump opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drill a $1.5 trillion tax bill. Environmental groups have opposed the move, citing the drilling threat to Indigenous communities and lands that are home to nearly 200 species.
While the public statement clearly indicates a preference for an economy fueled by oil, gas and coal over renewable energy, Luke Bolar, chief external affairs officer of ClearPath Action, a clean energy group that studies the truth, said there were “a lot of wins for clean energy innovation,” during Trump’s first term citing the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, Launchpad Grid Storage, expansion. and the 45Q tax credit extension, and the 2020 Energy Act, various initiatives intended to increase and expand electrification, carbon capture and nuclear energy.
If elected, Trump pledged to repeal what he called the Biden administration’s “electric vehicle mandate” on his first day in office, a move Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said “will save the American auto industry and cut costs to reduce inflation and get our economy booming.” .”
The Biden administration has not yet issued a mandate but has introduced it incentives to encourage EV adoption, including tax credits for those who meet income and eligibility requirements of up to $7,500 for new EVs and $4,000 for used EVs, and setting a target that half of all new vehicle sales will be zero-emission by 2030.
Trump also signaled that he would defund climate-focused agencies if he is elected. When discussing the budget cuts, he told Fox News, “One of the worst things for us is the environmental agency. They can’t do anything.”
As president, Trump proposed a 26% budget cut for EPA in 2020 and a 31% cut in 2019, which was ultimately rejected by the Democrat-led House Appropriations Committee.
Project 2025A Republican policy blueprint drawn up by conservatives with ties to Trump calls for “restructuring and streamlining” of the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump has distanced himself from projects supported by the Heritage Foundation, however CBS News analysis shows that among the 735 specific policy proposals outlined by Project 2025, more than one-third are connected to Trump in some way.
Trump in 2017 announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, an agreement signed by more than 200 countries to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The withdrawal process took three years to complete and was finalized one day after the election, on November 4, 2020. On Mr. Biden’s first day as president, he signed an order to rejoin the treaty. Trump will pull out of the agreement again if elected.
Does Donald Trump have a climate change plan?
Trump has yet to release a full roadmap outlining his proposed policies, but his team shared an outline of his energy plan with CBS News via email, some of which was detailed in a previous section.
One of the more ambitious goals in the plan is to cut energy and electricity prices by “more” than half. “Your energy bills will drop 50%-70%,” Trump’s statement above read. Experts who spoke to Axios were skeptical of the pledge, explaining that its ability to change global energy prices would be limited.
Outside of the energy plan, the Republican Party’s intentions for a Trump presidency can be gleaned from the official GOP platform.
Kamala Harris’s stance on climate change
Harris regularly touts the Inflation Reduction Act, which cast tie vote for. In an interview with CNN, he said that the climate crisis is “an important matter” and that the country must adopt emission metrics and meet certain deadlines.
“We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act,” he said. “We have set goals for the United States and by extension, in the world when we have to meet certain standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as an example.”
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration introduced tax credits in an effort to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles. According to a report by Axios, Harris has not clarified whether he supports the previous stance of making automakers only make electric or hydrogen vehicles by 2035. A spokesperson from his campaign told the news site that Harris “does not support an electric vehicle mandate.” CBS News has reached out to the Harris campaign for more information and is awaiting a response.
Before taking on the role of vice president, Harris held big oil companies accountable through his tenure as California attorney general. In 2016, he began an investigation into Exxon Mobil for allegedly misleading the public and shareholders about climate risks. That same year, he also sought legal action against the Plains All-American Pipeline over the 2015 oil spill.
However, he is not expected to end America’s oil and gas production if elected president.
As a candidate in the Democratic primaries four years ago, Harris said during a CNN town hall that he is in favor of banning fracking, a process that involves injecting a solution of water and chemicals into rock formations to extract oil and natural gas.
But during an Aug. 29 CNN interview, he said, “as president, I’m not going to ban fracking,” industry executives said quickly. However, he remains skeptical about other energy initiatives to come.
Oil and gas production reached record highs under the Biden administration. Mr. Biden approved nearly 50% more gas and oil leases during his tenure than his Republican predecessors did in their first three years in office, according to a report by Politico.
President Biden cancel oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that was implemented during the last days of Trump and instead proposed stronger protection for the 19 million hectare area.
When he was a senator from California, Harris is a sponsor of the Green New Deal, but in August, his campaign told CNN that he does not support the package of policy proposals.
Does Kamala Harris have a climate change plan?
Harris has yet to come up with a detailed energy and climate plan. The presidential candidate only briefly touched on his position during interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on August 29 and during him Democratic National Convention speech in Chicago. If not, his party platform offers a more realistic example about how they can tackle issues such as decarbonisation and the fossil fuel industry.
