https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/15/politics/harris-oil-companies-emissions-kfile/index.html
By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN Published 2:00 PM EDT, Tue October 15, 2024
CNN — When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2019, she repeatedly warned oil companies they should be prepared to face hefty fines and even criminal prosecution under a future Harris administration for their role in contributing to climate change.
Now, as the Democratic nominee, Harris is highlighting the country’s record oil and gas production. She rarely talks about climate change, and, despite having been a vigorous supporter of the Green New Deal, her campaign’s website is light on climate policy details.
It’s a stark shift that illustrates the delicate politics of energy — but also how Harris has abandoned a number of progressive positions she held before joining Joe Biden’s ticket in 2020.
As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris pledged to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass a Green New Deal, with strict deadlines for reducing fossil fuel use. She also signed a pledge to hold all future energy projects accountable to a “climate test” and promised to cancel two pipeline construction projects opposed by environmental activists. She pledged to ban fracking and signed on to niche environmental proposals such as banning plastic straws. And she ran numerous ads on Facebook touting her plans to “take on” the oil lobby and pass a Green New Deal.
“You should be really prepared to look at a serious fine or be charged with a crime,” Harris said in November 2019 when a South Carolina town hall attendee asked whether she would investigate companies such as Chevron and Shell for their role in contributing to climate change.
Harris went on to compare the actions of major oil companies to Big Tobacco, accusing them of knowingly profiting from environmental damage while concealing the harm caused by their products.
“And, not unlike the tobacco companies, after years — ’cause they’d done the research — they knew the harm that their product was causing. They were making so much money that they kept that secret — same thing with these big oil companies. And they need to pay the price,” she said. “So yes is the answer.”
Harris made a similar promise when speaking with the liberal Mother Jones magazine a month earlier, saying, “Let’s get them not only in the pocketbook, but let’s make sure there are severe and serious penalties for their behaviors.”
Harris’s shift on energy and climate began after joining the Biden ticket in August 2020 as the vice presidential pick. That year, she reversed her position on wanting to ban fracking, something she’d staked out in a 2019 CNN town hall.
In August of this year, a few weeks after Biden ended his bid for reelection, the Harris campaign said she no longer supports the Green New Deal. She says that she would not ban fracking and that she no longer wants to ban plastic straws.
In a local interview last month in Pennsylvania, Harris once again was forced to defend her record on wanting to ban fracking when asked about a Republican ad that highlighted her past comments.
“So let me start by saying that that ad as you described it is absolutely a mischaracterization, which I think is intended to make people afraid,” Harris replied. “I will not ban fracking. I did not as vice president.”
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Via Pielke Jr.’s website: By Benjamin Zycher, Senior Fellow (and colleague of mine) at the American Enterprise Institute
Excerpt: Zycher: Fossil energy production from federal lands is the end result of a lengthy process comprising complex preliminary analyses, leasing, exploration, permitting, and development; pursuit of a lease on specific federal acreage is highly speculative, driven by some perceived potential for fossil production years in the future, under market conditions that are uncertain at best, and which may or may not yield an actual resource economically viable
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As discussed above, the number of new drilling permits issued in a given year is driven heavily by leases approved in prior years, followed by the geologic and other analyses needed to determine if a drilling permit is worth pursuing.
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The increase in fossil energy production on federal lands observed during the Biden administration clearly is the result in substantial part of strong leasing and leasing acreage activity in 2019-2020. Both fell dramatically during the 2021-2023 period. The central conclusions to be drawn are that Mr. Biden is not the “drill, baby, drill” president, and that fossil energy production on federal lands is likely to decline during the next two to four years.
