The latest installment in an ongoing series examining where the 2024 presidential candidates stand on issues of great importance to voters. Previous entries have discussed their views abortion And the border.
In 2023, Congress passed sweeping legislation, signed by President Biden, to accelerate the transition of the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels in an effort to slow steadily rising global temperatures.
As a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election, climate change presents voters with a stark choice. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris differ on whether global warming is happening at all and whether the government should take steps to address it.
Voters are slightly less divided, with 78% saying they believe in climate change and 54% saying it is caused by human activity, according to an Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released in June. That same poll found that among people who have personally experienced “extreme climate events such as hurricanes, droughts, floods, unusual temperatures and wildfires,” 82% believe climate change is happening and 68% think it is an important issue for the 2024 election.
From a scientific point of view, the consensus among experts is clear. Unless humanity stops burning fossil fuels and adding greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, climate change will continue to worsen. To avoid a series of consequences that have already begun, world governments must work together to quickly transition to clean energy sources.
“Any increase in warming results in rapidly escalating dangers,” the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a report published last year. “More severe heat waves, heavier rainfall and other extreme weather events further increase risks to human health and ecosystems. In every region, people die from extreme heat.”
As the melting of the polar ice caps has accelerated, the rate of sea level rise has increased dramatically in the coastal areas of the southern US. Parts of that same region can expect an average sea level rise of 14 to 18 inches over the next 26 years. years, according to government forecasts. At the same time, summers are getting hotter, hurricanes are getting stronger and rainfall is becoming more extreme. As a result, many areas are facing a homeowners insurance crisis that could lead to a mortgage crisis, a potential crash in home values and the next major financial crisis for the country.
Yet addressing the causes of climate change has become a partisan issue, with 71% of Democrats in the Associated Press/NORC survey saying they support cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, compared with just 27% of Republicans who do so. do.
With that background in mind, here’s what Harris and Trump have done so far on climate change — and what they plan to do next.
Where they come from
Where Trump comes from: On numerous occasions, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese government in an effort to weaken the U.S. economy.
He also consistently portrays environmental regulations as foolish because they are anti-business and has attacked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its staff of “rogue bureaucrats,” whom he blames for enacting regulations that hinder the oil and gas industry.
Trump also routinely misrepresents scientific findings on the effects of climate change. “The oceans will rise half an inch in the next 300 years,” Trump said at a campaign rally in July. “We’ll have some more beachfront properties, which isn’t the worst thing in the world.”
In fact, sea levels will rise more each year for the foreseeable future, eventually inundating existing coastal areas before the end of the century.
Where Harris comes fromDuring the presidential debate in September, Harris chided Trump for saying climate change is a “hoax,” but then went on to tout what some might see as a contradictory message when it comes to combating rising temperatures on Earth.
“I am proud that as Vice President we have invested more than $1 trillion in a clean energy economy over the past four years, while also increasing domestic gas production to historic levels,” Harris said.
Unlike Trump, Harris regularly talks about climate change in terms of the economic impact it is already having on the American people.
“I truly believe elected leaders have a duty to protect our communities,” Harris said during a 2022 briefing on climate resilience in Miami. “And the climate crisis has obviously made that duty more important than ever before.”
Harris has also been consistent about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“The science is clear,” she said in Miami. “Extreme weather will only get worse, and the climate crisis will only accelerate.”
She has not explained how continuing to increase domestic gas production will help tackle what she has called an “existential threat.”
What they did in the office
What Trump did while in office: In 2019, Trump officially withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, the legally binding international treaty aimed at preventing global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. His administration said the deal was an “unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses and taxpayers.”
During his time in office, Trump also began dismantling dozens of executive orders issued by President Obama to address climate pollution, including regulations limiting emissions from power plants and further restrictions limiting emissions from cars and trucks.
Under Trump, the Interior Department approved oil and gas leasing on federal lands previously protected from drilling. It also relaxed a slew of environmental regulations and weakened federal efficiency standards.
Trump approved a right of way allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to be built across US territory. He also took aim at the EPA, appointing climate change skeptic Scott Pruitt as its head. The agency then moved to relax methane emissions rules for oil and gas companies, revoked California’s authority to set its own emissions standards and relaxed restrictions on emissions from refrigeration and air conditioning systems.
What Harris has done during his time in office: Harris cast the decisive vote in the Senate that secured passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history. The law was intended to spur the country’s transition to clean energy sources through a series of tax credits and incentives. It also provided hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for several new initiatives, including building solar energy facilities, replacing the Postal Service’s gasoline-powered delivery trucks with electric models and modernizing agricultural practices.
As a U.S. senator from California before becoming vice president, Harris was a sponsor of the Green New Deal. Under pressure from progressive Democrats, that plan, if passed and signed into law, would have ushered in a robust federal mandate to address climate change that would have gone far beyond the Inflation Reduction Act.
In 2019, when she first ran for president, Harris raised the possibility of fining or charging oil companies with a crime for their role in helping to cause climate change.
“These big oil companies, these fossil fuel companies, look, you should really be prepared to expect a serious fine or be charged with a crime. Because here’s the thing: these big oil companies and these fossil fuel companies have made so much money deserve and benefit from this pollution,” Harris said.
What they want to do next
What Trump wants to do now: Trump’s energy policy proposals can be summed up in three words: “Drill, baby, drill.” He often defends the view that the country’s economic fate depends on increasing oil and gas production. He is also passionately opposed to continuing federal regulations to address climate change, including the Inflation Reduction Act.
With coordination from oil and gas industry executives, Trump has gone so far as to lay out detailed plans for rolling back all of the Biden administration’s climate regulations if he is elected in November, the Washington Post reported.
Those plans came about after Trump hosted a meeting of oil executives for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home and country club in May, where he asked them to raise $1 billion for his presidential campaign in exchange for abolishing climate change regulations.
Trump has also pledged to go after the EPA again and roll back all of the agency’s energy sector regulations written to help the Biden administration meet its goals of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 push.
“I will reinstate my famously successful executive order requiring that for every new regulation, two old regulations be repealed,” Trump said promised in April.
What Harris wants to do next: On her campaign website, Harris states that she will “unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis.”
Harris has also shied away from providing details on how she plans to do that, though she remains committed to the approach of using tax breaks and incentives outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act to fuel the transition to clean energy sources to help stimulate.
At the same time, Harris has reversed her previous opposition to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique used to extract oil and gas that research has shown is responsible for a 40% increase in the amount of methane in the atmosphere this century.
“I will not ban fracking. I did not ban fracking as vice president of the United States,” Harris said during her debate with Trump.
In January, the Biden administration announced a temporary pause on U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas so the government can further study its impact on climate change.
Under Biden, the United States has become the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. A Cornell University study published in October found that due to factors such as methane leaks, processing and shipping, “liquid natural gas leaves a greenhouse gas footprint that is 33% worse than coal.”
Harris has not indicated whether she would end the export pause if elected president.
