Harris Campaign Says Kamala Has Changed, But Will She Bring California’s Climate Agenda To The White House?

Vice President Kamala Harris is signaling to the public that her views on energy issues have moderated, but policy experts and pundits who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation remain unconvinced that her evolution is genuine.

Harris — who got her start in politics in the progressive bastion of San Francisco — endorsed or otherwise suggested she supported left-wing environmental positions over the course of her political career. Her fledgling 2024 presidential campaign recently claimed she has moderated on key policies, but Harris herself will have to demonstrate that she has genuinely shifted positions on key energy-related issues if she is to be believed, pundits and policy experts told the DCNF.

One of her most significant reversals has been on the issue of fracking, an oil and gas extraction technique. As a presidential candidate in the 2020 cycle, she endorsed banning the practice, but her campaign recently told The Hill she no longer supports a ban.

“There’s a back-and-forth on fracking, but she hasn’t actually said she’s not opposed to fracking anymore, right? She sent her campaign guy out to say it,” Mike McKenna, a GOP strategist with experience in the energy sector, told the DCNF. “I think the real question out there is: Does she think California should have the right to determine the car mix in the United States? Is she in favor of the EV mandate? I haven’t heard anybody raise that question, and I get the feeling it would be pretty difficult for her to answer. I think I know what the answer would be.”

The reversal of her stance on a fracking ban, as well as other issues, reflects a campaign strategy to characterize her thinking as having “evolved” on environmental policy and beyond, according to Axios.

Harris’ record as attorney general of California, a senator and vice president also shows that she has governed to the left on climate and energy issues. Neither Harris nor the campaign have specified where she stands today on several policies that she has endorsed in the past several years, such as carbon taxes.

As California attorney general, Harris investigated ExxonMobil in 2016 for allegedly misleading the public about climate change and its relationship to their products. That same year, she sued the Obama administration for permitting offshore fracking off the coast of California and proceeded to co-sponsor the multi-trillion dollar Green New Deal plan to transition America away from reliance on fossil fuels as a senator in 2019.

While serving as vice president, she suggested that many young Americans are dealing with “climate anxiety” about what climate change may cause in the future and that it is in some cases so severe that young people may not want to have children because of their climate angst.

“Moderated. I can’t breathe!” Scott Jennings, an on-air pundit for CNN, told the DCNF, suggesting he finds the notion laughable.

“Only a real interview, press conference, or debate will solve this,” Jennings continued, in general reference to Harris’ policy reversals on several issues. “But then again, the interview needs to be something other than fawning or leg humping.”

Harris has yet to partake in any formal, extended interview or press conference since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ de facto nominee for president. In a brief comment to reporters, Harris said Thursday that her team is looking to schedule an interview sometime before the end of August.

Harris’ home state, which is dominated politically by Democrats, has also pursued some of the most aggressive green energy and climate initiatives of any state in the country.

“My impression of Kamala Harris is that she’s a career politician who is going to do whatever it takes to get elected, and she’s benefited in her career from the fact that she’s part of the political machine that runs California. In many ways, today’s California Democratic machine version is the 21st-century version of Tammany Hall, or Mayor Richard Daley’s organization in Chicago,” Edward Ring, co-founder of the California Policy Center, told the DCNF. “She will not change. She will remain a part of that machine, and that machine wants to expand government.”

Ring said Harris is a product of the same “machine” that birthed the political careers of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

California’s residential electricity prices were higher than those of all other states other than Hawaii in May 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, while the state’s gas prices are on average the most expensive in the continental U.S. The state’s power grid narrowly avoided blackouts in 2022, and policymakers are pursuing a goal of having a 100% green energy-powered grid by 2045.

Chevron, a major oil and gas company, recently announced that it is relocating its headquarters out of California in part because of the state’s adversarial approach to the traditional energy industry.

“California is an environmental and energy disaster. There’s nothing good going on in California, environmentally or energy-wise. They have huge environmental problems,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, told the DCNF of Harris’ home state. “And then she picks [as running mate Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz, another net-zero nut job. He wants Minnesota to go off fossil fuels by 2040. That’s crazy. I mean, some anonymous source saying that she’s changed on fracking — there’s nothing there, okay? And if you fall for that, you kind of deserve to have her as president, which will be a disaster for all of us.”

California is also allowed to set vehicle emissions standards that are more stringent than those of the federal government, and many states have chosen to attach themselves to California’s rules. Starting after 2035, the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles in the state will be banned.

For its part, the Trump campaign does not believe Harris has moderated, despite the efforts of her campaign to convince the public that she has.

“Kamala Harris is just as incompetent as Joe Biden and even more liberal. She was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for Joe Biden’s most disastrous policies,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement shared with the DCNF. “A vote for Kamala is a vote to continue inflation, open borders, high gas prices, and war around the world.”

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Republished with permission from The Daily Caller News Foundation.