Ten Harris/Walz Energy & Environmental Policies We Endorse
Giving credit where credit is due.
“Light travels faster than sound. That’s why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.” - (Author unknown)
As the United States counts down the final eight weeks before the 2024 Presidential election, we thought it would be a nice public service to provide readers with Democrat Presidential Candidate Vice President Kamala Harris’ energy and environmental policy priorities. Because of our interests, we drilled down in to the granular details on the candidate’s website. (In truth, it did not take very long.)
Below is a list of ten energy and environmental policies from the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign website that we enthusiastically and unabashedly endorse:
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No, Substack did not suffer a malfunction. There are no empty spaces here where there should be words.
Our (empty) list is more than merely a cheeky hat tip to Michael Knowles and his book “Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide”. In that 2017 book, Knowles details all of his reasons to vote for Democrats. He lists his reasoning in ten chapters on key political issues ranging from energy and economics to education and first principles. (But for each chapter’s title and the page headers, every page of Knowles’ book is blank. In Knowles view, there are no reasons to vote for Democrats.)
At this writing, eight weeks before the election, the Harris campaign website provides no energy and environmental policy priorities or proposals. Zero. Nor any economic, national security, foreign policy, immigration, or any others involving critical policy positions.
Do not take our word for it. Judge for yourself > kamalaharris.com.
Some might call this a joke, or vacuous. The Harris/Walz campaign seems to prefer the terms “joy and vibes”.
Since Mrs. Harris is apparently fearful of displaying them on her campaign website, the electorate has only her record and rhetoric on which to discern her energy and environmental policy priorities. Her record as a U.S. senator, and her ill-fated 2020 Presidential campaign, are therefore instructive.
When she ran for President in 2020, Harris campaigned on a promise to ban fracking. Now in 2024, she seems to have conveniently reversed that position.
During her 2019 campaign, Harris introduced a $10 trillion “plan” to make the U.S. economy “carbon neutral” by 2045. Key to that plan was that by 2030, 100% of U.S. electricity would be generated by CO2-emissions free sources. You did not need to be a utility engineer or Vaclav Smil to know that such vacuous promises were impossible. Today, Kamala Harris believes that goal can still be achieved by 2035.
When trying to understand bad policies, it is usually unnecessary to assume malevolence when ignorance is more than sufficient to explain the motivation. Consider it a sad form of Occam’s Razor. (That said, history teaches discounting or ignoring malevolence comes at great peril. As such, a high degree of vigilance is warranted.)
In 2019, Vice President Harris was one of the eleven original co-sponsors of Senator Edwin Markey’s Senate Resolution 59, the Senate’s version of the “Green New Deal” resolution (H. Res. 109) introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the U.S. House of Representatives. Both were stunts and died in committee, but not before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called their bluff with his own resolution to advance the GND to a vote on the floor of the full Senate. When the cloture vote was finally called, fifty three Republican Senators voted “Nay”. They were joined by three Democrats - Joe Manchin (WV), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), an Doug Jones (AL) - and one Independent (Maine’s junior Senator, Angus King). Forty two Democrat senators, including Senator Markey, Senator Harris and every other Democrat co-sponsor of the GND voted “Present” (as did Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders). California’s Senator Diane Feinstein chose not to join Senator Harris in co-sponsoring the GND. She joined the forty two other Democrat senators who voted “Present”. After puffing up their chests in the name of “the existential climate crisis” while introducing their landmark legislation, when it came time to actually advance the GND, none of the regressive “progressive” senators had the courage to even vote in favor of what they had introduced. The American public should be relieved to know they were “Present”, however.
More recently, when the Senate voted ended in a 50-50 tie, it was Vice Present Harris who cast the deciding vote that sent the Inflation (non)Reduction Act (IRA) to President Biden’s desk for signature . The $369 billion the IRA authorized for “energy security” and “climate change” is only what the electorate sees above the waterline. Below it, tax incentives for nonreliables (wind/solar) with no cap mean the actual cost will be measured in the trillions. As Wood Mackenzie noted in March 2023 (emphasis added):
Based on the language in the IRA, our view is that these tax credits will be extended for substantially longer than 2032 – perhaps even 30-40 years. Absent IRA repeal, this means that instead of several hundred billion dollars in tax credits for new renewables and storage through 2032, the real money on the table is on the order of trillions of dollars over multiple decades.
In July, President Biden dropped out of the 2024 Presidential race, handing the presumptive Democrat party nomination to Vice President Harris. Seventeen days later, on the two year anniversary of casting the deciding IRA vote, Vice President Harris crowed about it again.
Since Vice President Harris has no apparent interest in providing any real energy or environmental policy details for voters, perhaps the Democrat Party Platform 2024, adopted eight days before Biden withdrew from the 2024 Presidential campaign, can provide some guidance. There, the terms “climate change” or “climate” appear fourteen times. Below are a few choice excerpts under the heading “Joe Biden and Democrats’ Plan to Tackle the Climate Crisis, Lower Energy Costs, and Secure Energy Independence” (emphasis ours):
“The Platform focuses on priorities for Democrats up and down the ballot, from growing the economy to lowering costs for families; tackling the climate crisis and securing energy independence.” (Editor’s note: these go together like tuna fish and peanut butter.)
We’ve created nearly 16 million jobs, prescription drug prices are coming down, and we’re taking the most ambitious action in world history to fight climate change.
Through record energy production of clean energy, oil, and gas, we’ve lowered prices at the pump for American families. (Editor’s note: draining the SPR ahead of 2022 mid-term elections sure helped!)
Democrats will scale up solar, wind, and geothermal projects made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act and invest in clean energy R&D to build America’s legacy as a nation of new frontiers and possibilities.
We’ll also eliminate tens of billions of dollars in unfair oil and gas subsidies and hold oil and gas executives accountable for potential collusion or price gouging.
For each major policy topic, the platform attempts to contrast the Democrat party and Vice President Harris with former President Trump’s policies. Take for example this excerpt under that same heading noted above:
“Donald Trump’s Project 2025 Plans: Donald Trump is still trying to deny what we all see happening right before our eyes. He told oil executives he’d reverse our climate progress and slash their taxes once more – if they’d give him $1 billion for his campaign. He wants to roll back the clean energy progress that President Biden has made, gut the Environmental Protection Agency, and let polluters dump dangerous PFAS chemicals in our water. Project 2025 calls to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s signature legislation that is the largest investment in climate in history..”
It is reasonable to expect that a Harris/Walz administration will attempt to restrict fracking on federal lands, restrict new liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals, use the Federal Energy Regulator Commission (FERC) to disrupt interstate pipelines, keep the designated oil and natural gas production areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) off limits, attempt to close coal and even natural gas-fired power plants under creative new means of regulating CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act that will require court challenge, and a host of other similar measures.
It is equally reasonable to expect that a Harris/Walz administration will attempt to use debt (read: more money printing) to continue to prop up nonreliable sources of energy, principally wind and solar. And, do nothing to step back from the current pipe dream of forcing electric vehicles (EVs) to account for 67% of all new private passenger sales in the U.S. by 2032. Or see the economic and physical realities that make “green hydrogen” an energy loser. These are merely a few examples.
None of these measures will reduce inflation, strengthen the U.S. economy, or increase either energy security or national security in our view. Instead, they will do the opposite.
Modern industrial economies will not be run on wind, solar, biomass, biofuels, battery storage, and energy conservation. The German experience proves that reality.
In America, as in the rest of the world, the consequences of bad environmental and energy policies matter the most to those with the least. Those at the lowest end of the economic spectrum spend the highest percentage of their labor and income on transportation fuel, heating and cooling. About half of the world’s food production relies on fertilizers produced with hydrocarbons (chiefly natural gas). Ask the people of Sri Lanka if that matters.
For people who can afford a $60,000 - $250,000 EV, with or without a $7,500 tax credit paid for by people who cannot afford such a luxury, these policy considerations are of little concern. For now, at least.
This post is about one U.S. Presidential candidate’s - and her party’s - energy and environmental policies. Or, more precisely, her inability (or unwillingness) to articulate any that are rational.
It is not an endorsement of former President Trump. We will have more to say about his proposed energy and environmental policies as well as those outlined in the Republican party’s platform in another post this month. We have written critically about Republican-favored policies, including the party’s support for corn ethanol. We are environmental, energy, and economic ideologues, not political partisans.
Vice President Harris should make an attempt to clearly state her energy and environmental policy positions. The American electorate deserves that much respect.
(Editor’s Note: Today, shortly after we released this post, the Harris/Walz campaign finally released a policy platform on the campaign website, adding a new tab titled “Issues”. Interested readers may find that new addition here.)
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In a twist of irony, the "drill, baby, drill" party ends up being anything but a boon for the oil industry. While their policies may ostensibly benefit consumers and the broader economy, they do so by undermining the industry. In the realm of commodities, an administration that over-taxes, over-regulates, and restricts access doesn't merely inflate industry profits—it also drives consolidation and concentrates control. A Harris administration boon for inflation-making society poorer-while simultaneously make oil investor wealthier.
I noticed the sudden appearance of the Harris/Walz platform just hours after I read this new piece. Sadly, the energy and climate portion of the platform is simply an aspirational statement that continues to mask what Harris/Walz will actually do. For a preview of the nuts behind the curtain, check out this work by David Blackmon. https://open.substack.com/pub/blackmon/p/courts-revoking-permits-for-oil-and?r=1qevah&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I'm not a paid subscriber, so I can't read his entire essay, but I did have a conversation about this issue while at the AAPG IMAGE conference last week. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biological opinion that allows BOEM to issue permits for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has been vacated by a District Judge in Maryland. The judge delayed the action until December 20th to allow existing work to continue, but beyond that, who knows? If, as Harris says, her values haven't changed, then I think that Harris/Walz will continue to try and make it difficult to access energy resources that work.