Kamala Harris will continue Biden's climate policies, say experts. But is that good enough?

With President Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has become his heir apparent and the near-certain Democratic nominee. Most climate scientists and activists expect that a potential Harris administration would continue Biden's climate policies. Whether that's a good or bad thing, however, is very much up for debate.

Seth Schuster, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, told Salon that "no one will fight harder to address the climate crisis than Vice President Harris. She’s proud to have delivered the most significant climate legislation in American history with President Biden," a reference to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Biden and Harris created "hundreds of thousands of new jobs," Schuster continued, "while Donald Trump continues to call climate change a 'hoax' and promises to ... ship those jobs overseas."

Harris would appear to have a strong record on environmental and climate policy, stretching back to the beginning of her political career. As attorney general of California, she investigated Exxon Mobil over allegations it had misled the public and shareholders about the risks of climate change. Harris also secured an $86 million settlement from Volkswagen for cheating on diesel emissions tests and indicted a pipeline company over a 2015 oil spill off the California coast.

In the U.S. Senate, Harris was an early co-sponsor of the original 2019 Green New Deal legislation proposed by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. While climate policy was not a major factor in Harris' short-lived 2020 presidential campaign, as vice president she has been a strong booster of Biden's climate agenda. She was the highest-ranking U.S. official to attend the COP28 conference in Dubai last year, and committed the United States to double its energy efficiency and triple its renewable energy capacity by 2030.

Opinions in the climate science world are divided, however, on whether the Biden legacy is good enough. Dr. Michael E. Mann of the University of Pennsylvania is a pretty big fan. "Biden’s climate legacy is significant," he told Salon. "The fact that he was able to shepherd and sign into the law the most aggressive climate legislation yet in a 50/50 Senate ... speaks to what a masterful chief executive he was." Biden had successfully implemented "a bold agenda of executive actions to help accelerate the clean energy transition," Mann continued. "I expect a President Harris to build on that legacy."

Donald Trump, Mann said, had "tried to sell" our planet "to the highest bidder."

Dr. Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an associate project scientist at UCLA's Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering, expressed dramatically different views of Biden's climate policies, saying he felt personally betrayed by the president. On the campaign trail in 2020, Kalmus said, "Biden often said that he'd 'listen to the scientists' on climate," Kalmus said. "What a lie. As a climate scientist, it feels personal."

Kalmus acknowledged that the Inflation Reduction Act has "some good stuff," but argued that it was no better than "a tap on the brakes" and does not go nearly far enough to limit or reduce the use of fossil fuels. "Biden took every opportunity to expand fossil fuels, just as Trump did," Kalmus said, citing the administration's approval of several drilling and pipeline projects. "He approved almost 50% more oil and gas drilling permits on federal lands in his first three years than Trump. ... Biden's overarching legacy will likely end up being this: He accelerated global heating by expanding fossil fuels."

Science journalist Spencer Roberts, who has written for Wired and The Nation, posted on Twitter/X that Biden had broken his campaign promises to stop oil drilling on federal land, further claiming alleged that Biden broke the 1855 treaty between the U.S. government and the Ojibwe nation by forcing through construction of a pipeline on Indigenous land, and calling out the National Guard to arrest protesters. Roberts also said Biden had offered "egregious subsidies to oil and gas, meat and dairy, fishing, logging, mining."

For Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Biden's moderate approach was at least a step in the right direction. The president's record has been "excellent," Trenberth said, considering the obstacles he faced from Republicans and the fossil fuel industry. "Emissions from the U.S. are down more than anywhere else in the world," Trenberth said, while noting that increased emissions from growing economies like China and India have "overwhelmed all the gains elsewhere."

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Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University professor of geosciences and international affairs, told Salon that Biden has an "obvious" legacy on climate: "He respected science and followed its implications." In addition to praising the Inflation Reduction Act and the U.S. return to the Paris climate accords, Oppenheimer cited the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 as "largely built around investments that will significantly reduce U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the coming decades, and to a lesser extent ... begin to deal with climate adaptation. Together with regulations on greenhouse gas emissions developed by EPA, this is by far the most significant U.S. government effort to deal with climate change to date."
 
Oppenheimer argued that Biden had, at the very least, reversed Trump administration policies and restored many of the gains made under Barack Obama. If Trump returns to the White House next year, he said, "U.S. leadership would shrivel" on climate policy and, "depending on the next Congress and the Supreme Court ... and EPA’s attempts to regulated emissions from electric power plants and motor vehicles would suffer another setback. The world’s overall efforts to reduce emissions and avoid a truly disruptive and dangerous warming would be slowed." Many of the objectives set in motion by Obama and Biden will be attainable with or without Trump in office, he added, but "the climate clock is ticking toward that dangerous level of warming, so time is one thing we can’t afford to lose – we desperately need the prod from policy. Four more years of Trump would be four years lost on climate policy."

The Trump campaign defended the former president's record in a statement to Salon. "President Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country," said Trump 2024 national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. "America’s energy agenda under President Trump produced affordable, reliable energy for consumers along with stable, high-paying jobs for small businesses — all while dropping U.S. carbon emissions to their lowest level in 25 years. Dangerously liberal Kamala Harris's radical energy policies such as her EV mandate and the Green New Scam will hurt American workers, help China, and do virtually nothing to help the environment.”

What important climate policies should be on a potential Harris agenda? "We still don’t have a consistent federal government policy on climate adaptation," Oppenheimer said. "One important component would be to make sure that Justice 40 — the aspect of government investments on climate change at the community level from the Inflation Reduction Act — is implemented properly and fully. Communities that are highly vulnerable socioeconomically are largely the places where climate impacts are expected to hit hardest and also where capacity to build climate resilience is lowest. They need help."

Mann believes, along with many other liberals and progressives, that a possible President Harris should seek to expand the Supreme Court. "The current 6-3 majority answers only to the fossil fuel industry," he said. "They must be rendered irrelevant before they do irreparable harm to the planet."

Trenberth suggested that the Inflation Reduction Act should focus less on carbon capture and storage, the preferred strategy of fossil fuel companies, and instead emphasize reducing emissions.

For Kalmus, only drastic measures by a future Harris administration can pull humanity from the brink. "Stop expanding fossil fuels, ban fossil fuel advertising and champion an international fossil fuel reduction treaty," he said. Make it illegal for the fossil fuel industry to spread disinformation. Use the bully pulpit. Create a federal program to educate the public on the basics of climate science and solutions. Give the world a positive vision for a cooler future without fossil fuels."