Harris, Trump Offer Starkly Different Visions on Climate Change and Energy

Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
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Harris, Trump Offer Starkly Different Visions on Climate Change and Energy

Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)

As the Earth sizzled through a summer with four of the hottest days ever measured, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have starkly different visions on how to address a changing climate while ensuring a reliable energy supply. But neither has provided many details on how they would get there.

During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris briefly mentioned climate change as she outlined “fundamental freedoms” at stake in the election, including “the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”

As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law that was approved with only Democratic support. As a senator from California, she was an early sponsor of the Green New Deal, a sweeping series of proposals meant to swiftly move the US to fully green energy that is championed by the Democratic Party’s most progressive wing.

Trump, meanwhile, led chants of “drill, baby, drill” and pledged to dismantle the Biden administration’s “green new scam” in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. He has vowed to boost production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal and repeal key parts of the 2022 climate law.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country by far,” Trump said at the RNC, The AP reported. “We are a nation that has the opportunity to make an absolute fortune with its energy.”

‘Climate champion’ or unfair regulations? Environmental groups, who largely back Harris, call her a “proven climate champion” who will take on Big Oil and build on Biden's climate legacy, including policies that boost electric vehicles and limit planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.

"We won’t go back to a climate denier in the Oval Office,'' said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action.

Republicans counter that Biden and Harris have spent four years adopting “punishing regulations” that target American energy while lavishing generous tax credits for electric vehicles and other green priorities that cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

“This onslaught of overreaching and outrageous climate rules will shut down power plants and increase energy costs for families across the country,'' said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. "Republicans will work to stop them and fight for solutions that protect our air and water and allow our economy to grow.”

Democrats have a clear edge on the issue. More than half of US adults say they trust Harris “a lot” or “some” when it comes to addressing climate change, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in July. About 7 in 10 say they have “not much” trust in Trump or “none at all” when it comes to climate. Fewer than half say they lack trust in Harris.

A look at where the two candidates stand on key climate and energy issues:

Fracking and offshore drilling Harris said during her short-lived 2020 presidential campaign that she opposed offshore drilling for oil and hydraulic fracturing, an oil and gas extraction process better known as fracking.

But her campaign has clarified that she no longer supports a ban on fracking, a common drilling practice that is crucial to the economy in Pennsylvania, a key swing state and the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas.

“As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking,'' Harris told CNN Thursday in her first major television interview as the Democratic nominee. "We can grow ... a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.''

Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington research firm, said Harris’ evolving views show she is “trying to balance climate voters and industry supporters,″ even as her campaign takes ”an adversarial stance″ with the oil and gas industry overall.

Harris and Democrats have cited new rules — authorized by the climate law — to increase royalties that oil and gas companies pay to drill or mine on public lands. She also has supported efforts to clean up old drilling sites and cap abandoned wells that often spew methane and other pollutants.

Trump, who pushed to roll back scores of environmental laws as president, says his goal is for the US to have the cheapest energy and electricity in the world. He’d increase oil drilling on public lands, offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers and speed the approval of natural gas pipelines.

Electric vehicles Trump has frequently criticized tough new vehicle emissions rules imposed by Biden, incorrectly calling them an electric vehicle “mandate.″ Environmental Protection Agency rules issued this spring target tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks and encourage — but do not require — sales of new EVs to meet the new standards.

Trump has said EV manufacturing will destroy jobs in the auto industry. In recent months, however, he has softened his rhetoric, saying he’s for “a very small slice” of cars being electric.

The change comes after Tesla CEO Elon Musk “endorsed me very strongly,” Trump said at an August rally in Atlanta. Even so, industry officials expect Trump to roll back Biden’s EV push and attempt to repeal tax incentives that Trump claims benefit China.

Harris has not announced an EV plan but has strongly supported EVs as vice president. At a 2022 event in Seattle, she celebrated roughly $1 billion in federal grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses. As many as 25 million children ride the familiar yellow buses each school day, and they will have a healthier future with a cleaner fleet, Harris said.

The grants and other federal climate programs not only are aimed at “saving our children, but for them, saving our planet,″ she said.

Climate law, jobs Harris has focused on implementing the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021, as well as climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided nearly $375 billion in financial incentives for electric cars, clean energy projects and manufacturing.

Under Biden and Harris, American manufacturers created more than 250,000 energy jobs last year, the Energy Department said, with clean energy accounting for more than half of those jobs.

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, deride climate spending as a "money grab'' for environmental groups and say it will ship Americans' jobs to China and other countries while increasing energy prices at home.

“Kamala Harris cares more about climate change than about inflation,” Vance wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

Goodbye Paris? Trump, who has cast climate change as a “hoax," withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. He has vowed to do so again, calling the global plan to reduce carbon emissions unenforceable and a gift to China and other big polluters. Trump vows to end wind subsidies included in the climate law and eliminate regulations imposed and proposed by the Biden administration to increase the energy efficiency of lightbulbs, stoves, dishwashers and shower heads.

Harris has called the Paris Agreement crucial to address climate change and protect “our children’s future.″

The US returned to the Paris Agreement soon after Biden took office in 2021.

LNG pause After approving numerous projects to export liquefied natural gas, or LNG, the Biden administration in January paused consideration of new natural gas export terminals. The delay allows officials to review the economic and climate impacts of natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The decision aligned the Democratic president with environmentalists who fear the recent increase in LNG exports is locking in potentially catastrophic planet-warming emissions even as Biden has pledged to cut climate pollution in half by 2030.

Trump has said he would approve terminals “on my very first day back” in office.

Harris has not outlined plans for LNG exports, but analysts expect her to impose tough climate standards on export projects as part of her larger stance against large oil and gas companies.



7 Killed by Russian Attacks as Moscow Pushes Ahead in Ukraine's East

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
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7 Killed by Russian Attacks as Moscow Pushes Ahead in Ukraine's East

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV

Russian shelling in the town of Chasiv Yar on Saturday killed five people, as Moscow’s troops pushed ahead in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The attack struck a high-rise building and a private home, said regional Gov. Vadym Filaskhin, who said the victims were men aged 24 to 38. He urged the last remaining residents to leave the front-line town, which had a pre-war population of 12,000.
“Normal life has been impossible in Chasiv Yar for more than two years,” Filaskhin wrote on social media. “Do not become a Russian target — evacuate.” A further two people were killed by Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region. One victim was pulled from the rubble of a house in the village of Cherkaska Lozova, said Gov. Oleh Syniehubov, while a second woman died of her wounds while being transported to a hospital.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it captured the town of Pivnichne, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim.
Russian forces have been driving deeper into the partly occupied eastern region, the total capture of which is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions. Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defense in the area.
At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion onto Russian soil since World War II. The move is partly an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.
Elsewhere, the number of wounded following a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday continued to rise.
Six people were killed, including a 14-year-old girl, when glide bombs struck five locations across the city, said regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov. Writing on social media Saturday, he said that the number of injured had risen from 47 to 96.
Syniehubov also confirmed that the 12-story apartment block that was hit by one bomb strike, setting the building ablaze and trapping at least one person on an upper floor, would be partly demolished.
Ukrainian officials have previously pointed to the Kharkiv strikes as further evidence that Western partners should scrap restrictions on what the Ukrainian military can target with donated weapons.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said that Kyiv had presented Washington with a list of potential long-range targets within Russia for its approval. “I hope we were heard,” he said.
He also denied speculation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ’s decision to dismiss the commander of the country’s air force Friday was directly linked to the destruction of an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from its Western partners four days earlier.
The order to dismiss Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk was published on the presidential website minutes before an address which saw Zelenskyy stress the need to “take care of all our soldiers.”
“This is two separate issues,” said Umerov. “At this stage, I would not connect them.”
The number of injured also continued to rise in the Russian border region of Belgorod, where five people were killed Friday by Ukrainian shelling, said Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. He said Sunday that 46 people had been injured, of whom 37 were in the hospital, including seven children. Writing on social media, Gladkov also said that two others had been injured in Ukrainian shelling across the region.