September 11, 2024
4 min learn
Presidential Debate Options Fracking whereas Local weather Change Is Principally Ignored
Donald Trump all however ignored local weather change at Tuesday’s presidential debate whereas Kamala Harris voiced assist of each fossil fuels and elevated clear vitality spending
U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks throughout a presidential debate with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the Nationwide Structure Heart in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024.
CLIMATEWIRE | Vice President Kamala Harris lastly talked about the local weather regulation she has pointedly averted on the marketing campaign path — to show she will not ban fracking.
“I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States, and in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking,” Harris stated at Tuesday night time’s debate with former President Donald Trump in Philadelphia.
“My position is that we have to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” she continued. “We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot overrely on foreign oil.”
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Harris was responding to Trump, who claimed that if she wins the election, “fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.”
Harris supported a ban on fracking in 2019 however has since reversed her place on the drilling follow, which looms giant in gas-rich Pennsylvania. Most paths to successful the presidency embrace successful the swing state.
The talk — hosted by ABC Information on the Nationwide Structure Heart — was maybe the one alternative for the American public to listen to the candidates straight problem one another on coverage forward of the November election.
Harris dominated a lot of the talk, taunting Trump on his crowd sizes, his previous bankruptcies, his inherited wealth and his stature on the worldwide stage.
Local weather change took a backseat to points like abortion and geopolitics. However Harris labored to outline herself on the talk stage as a supporter of each fossil fuels and elevated clear vitality spending.
She touted the Biden administration’s historic funding in clear vitality — linking it to “opening up manufacturing around the world” — and pointed to the uptick in climate-fueled excessive climate. And he or she emphasised Trump’s local weather denial.
“The former president has said climate change is a ‘hoax,’ and what we know is that it is very real,” she stated.
The talk was a possibility for Harris to win over undecided voters. A New York Occasions/Siena School ballot launched days in the past confirmed {that a} vital share of voters, 28 p.c, really feel they should know extra about her earlier than November — in comparison with simply 9 p.c who say they should know extra about Trump.
A separate Marist School ballot launched Tuesday discovered that 30 p.c of voters stated the “debate will help them a great deal or good amount in making their selection for president.”
Trump used the talk to deliver out the identical local weather themes that he has touched on ceaselessly throughout his nearly 10 years in political life. He claimed that local weather coverage kills jobs and destroys manufacturing and that the Inflation Discount Act is basically a giveaway to China.
He additionally made dire predictions a few Harris administration.
“Oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead,” Trump stated. “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. 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.”
Oil and gas production has soared to historic levels under the Biden administration — a fact Harris pointed out. She also attacked Trump for his conspiratorial energy claims and invited viewers to watch his rallies so they could see for themselves.
“He will talk about how windmills cause cancer,” she stated.
On the campaign trail, Trump has promised to both bring back $2 gasoline and decrease inflation by dramatically expanding oil and gas drilling.
However oil and gasoline costs are set by a worldwide market and largely out of the palms of a president, and economists have stated that drilling for extra oil will do little to fight inflation.
Harris, meanwhile, has barely mentioned the Biden administration’s climate record, which includes the biggest climate spending package in U.S. history and historic investments in clean energy that have created thousands of new jobs.
When she does speak about the Inflation Reduction Act on the campaign trail, she usually touches more on its health care provisions, such as price caps on certain medications.
Harris recently released a policy platform, with a section on energy and climate that does not propose any new specific ideas that differ from Biden’s approach. But on Tuesday, she referenced the importance of climate policy to a crucial demographic: the young voters who were key to Biden’s 2020 victory.
“We know that we can actually deal with this issue,” she said of climate change. “The young people of America care deeply about this issue.”
Reprinted from E&E Information with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E Information offers important information for vitality and surroundings professionals.
