What could President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 election mean for the climate? Questions have come pouring in from both sides of the aisle about what will happen now, though all signs point to Vice President Kamala Harris taking over the ticket following a rush of support and funding.
Throughout her political career, Harris has been active in the climate policy space, and analysts say that her record could indicate a strong campaign stance on major environmental issues—from accelerating the clean energy transition to holding companies accountable for their emissions.
However, questions remain on her ability to beat former president Donald Trump as the election rapidly approaches, which could have major implications for the climate.
Biden’s Climate Legacy: During his term, President Biden has made some major moves for climate policy. In 2022, he signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which marks the single largest investment in clean energy and climate action in American history. He finalized a sweeping set of regulations for power plants to cap their climate warming emissions, and passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, providing grants for clean energy jobs and efforts to fortify infrastructure against extreme weather.
However, oil and natural gas production has also thrived during Biden’s presidency, hitting an all-time high. Grist’s Zoya Teirstein points out that “he will leave office with a portion of his proposed climate agenda unpassed and the U.S. still projected to miss his administration’s goal of reducing emissions at least 50 percent by 2030.”
This leaves the future Democratic candidate to see these policies through if elected. While Biden’s replacement is still technically up in the air, a majority of Democrats in Congress and every U.S. Democratic governor have voiced their support for Harris as the new nominee. Her campaign has already raised a whopping $100 million since its launch rougly 48 hours ago, CBS News reports. Over the past four years, much of Harris’s climate record has matched Biden’s, with extra attention toward environmental justice issues during her vice presidency.
Harris’s Climate Record: I’m fresh out of crystal balls to predict what will happen come November, but experts say Harris’ climate record offers clues to her future moves if elected.
As attorney general of California, she investigated and in some cases filed claims against companies—from Volkswagen to ConocoPhillips—for environmental violations such as their contributions to climate-warming pollution. Later, as California senator, Harris was one of the original co-sponsors of the Green New Deal. The progressive—but eventually failed—resolution aimed to help the country rapidly wean off fossil fuels. E&E News’ Brian Dabbs and Heather Richards walked through Harris’s energy record in depth, if you’d like to learn more.
During her presidential run in 2020, she pushed for more aggressive steps on climate than Biden, calling for a $10 trillion increase in funding on climate action over 10 years, as well as a ban on fracking. Though Harris hasn’t yet laid out her campaign’s entire environmental policy platform, her climate advisor, Ike Irby, told The New York Times that she would focus on implementing the IRA.
“She will fight every day for all Americans to have access to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment,” Gina McCarthy, who served as national climate adviser under Biden, said in a statement Sunday. “Vice President Harris would kick ass against Trump.”
However, there are concerns over Harris’ ability to beat Trump in the election. The latest polls show that Harris trails Trump by around 2 percentage points nationally, though experts say this could change as the vice president’s campaign launches in earnest.
What’s clear is that the election will have profound implications for the climate. My colleague Marianne Lavelle recently wrote about some of the ripple effects of Trump’s presidency—which saw rollbacks to more than 100 regulations to protect air, water, endangered species and human health—on governments around the world. My colleagues and I at Inside Climate News are covering the election and what’s at stake for the climate as November approaches, and you can find all those stories here.
More Top Climate News
On Friday, the Biden administration announced an effort to phase out plastics from the largest buyer of consumer goods in the world: the federal government. The plan would limit the consumption “of single-use plastics from food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035,” according to a White House statement.
By leveraging the government’s purchasing power, Biden hopes to encourage widespread adoption of plastic-free operations and spur investment in more sustainable substitutes. As my colleague Jim Bruggers has covered extensively, plastic recycling is notoriously difficult and ineffective, so phasing out single-use goods could be a step in the right direction, environmentalists say.
Meanwhile, extreme weather events are putting domestic pets at increased risk across the U.S., National Geographic reports. Already overcrowded and low on funds, many animal shelters are being forced to retrofit facilities to better handle high summer temperatures or torrential rains. In other cases, shelters are conducting rescue missions to save stranded pets during storms or wildfire events.
“We pretty much have to monitor events year-round and potentially respond year-round as well. That’s been a dramatic change,” Josh Cary, rescue operations director for American Humane, a U.S. animal-welfare organization that monitors weather threats, told National Geographic.
In other news, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a partnership with United Airlines today to equip a Boeing 737 with technology to monitor the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas emissions during commercial flights. If the effort expands to a network of airlines, it could help the agency track climate-warming gases at a wider scale than it currently does.
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Kiley Price is a reporter at Inside Climate News, with a particular interest in wildlife, ocean health, food systems and climate change. She writes ICN’s “Today’s Climate” newsletter, which covers the most pressing environmental news each week.
She earned her master’s degree in science journalism at New York University, and her bachelor’s degree in biology at Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Scientific American and more. She is a former Pulitzer Reporting Fellow, during which she spent a month in Thailand covering the intersection between Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement.
