Vice President Kamala Harris has officially thrown her hat in the ring for the 2024 presidential race with President Joe Biden‘s endorsement, following his announcement Sunday he’s stepping aside.
As the nation begins to envision a possible Harris presidency, her history of environmental policy is receiving renewed attention.
As a U.S. senator, Harris was an early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, a non-binding blueprint for transitioning the country to 100% clean energy within a decade. The Green New Deal was first introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey in February 2019.
The climate proposal also includes job guarantees for displaced workers and a call for a national healthcare system. In 2019, as a candidate for president, Harris unveiled a plan to spend $10 trillion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with a goal of getting to a zero-emissions economy by 2045.
Harris also called for a “climate pollution fee” that would “make polluters pay for emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere,” and she indicated that a Harris administration would strengthen its enforcement and prosecution of fossil fuel companies.
During her presidential campaign, Harris said in 2020 that she would establish an independent Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability that would “represent the views of frontline communities, conduct research on issues and trends in frontline communities, measure the costs and benefits of federal actions on frontline communities, and monitor government compliance.”
During a CNN forum on climate change in 2020, Harris said she opposed fracking and offshore drilling. She said she would also ban fossil fuel leases on public lands if elected as president.
As California’s attorney general in 2016, Harris investigated Exxon Mobil over concerns that the company misled the public and its shareholders about the risks of climate change and whether its public statements violated securities laws and other statutes.
Harris also sued Plains All-American Pipeline over a 2015 oil spill off the California coast and obtained a criminal indictment of the company. She also secured an $86 million settlement for the state from Volkswagen for allegations of cheating on diesel emissions tests.
When she was San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris created what she called the nation’s first environmental justice unit.
“Crimes against the environment are crimes against communities, people who are often poor and disenfranchised,” Harris said in 2005. “The people who live in those communities often have no other choice but to live there.” Harris supports the Paris Climate Agreement and has said she will make the climate crisis a top national security priority.
