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Young climate campaigners are urging Kamala Harris not to soften her position on global warming in a bid to win over swing voters as she campaigns to become the next US president.
“We are watching and waiting to see what kind of vision she puts forward on climate in coming weeks,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate organisation that helped elect Joe Biden in 2020, but recently called for him to stand aside.
“When Democrats run away from their progressive stances when they run for president they look like flip-floppers,” said O’Hanlon. “She has a chance to defend the positions she has taken over the last decade and make the case for them.”
The Sunrise Movement said it would allow its members to vote on whether the group should endorse Harris as the Democratic candidate over the next two months.
But its caution about endorsing Harris underscores the political difficulty of generating enthusiasm among young Americans, who proved a crucial part of the Democratic party’s winning coalition in 2020, while also appealing to a wider voter base with more moderate views on climate action.
Harris has been one of the leading spokespeople for Joe Biden’s historic package of green subsidies, and has previously taken positions to the left of Biden on climate change.
As the senator for California, Harris sponsored the progressive Democrats’ Green New Deal legislation and took up an anti-fracking position while campaigning to be the Democratic nominee in 2020.
Harris distanced herself from her anti-fracking stance after being recruited as Joe Biden’s running mate, however, and is likely to remain neutral as she vies to win swing states, such as Pennsylvania, where fracking is a large industry.
Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, is among those being touted by donors and Democratic party members as a possible running mate and vice-presidential pick.
As California’s attorney-general, Harris challenged approvals of offshore fracking along the Californian coast and also launched an investigation into ExxonMobil over whether it misled the public about the risks of climate change from the burning of fossil fuels.
Paul Bledsoe, a former White House climate official, said he did not expect Harris to return to the fracking cause. “That’s not going to work,” he said. “And as vice-president, she has not supported a fracking ban.”
Bledsoe said he expected to see Harris focus on the issue of cutting methane emissions from US oil and gas production. “There is a way forward for her that is very pro-climate protection and yet allows gas exports.”
Climate groups have broadly welcomed Harris’s ascendancy to the top of the Democratic ticket. Evergreen Action praised her as a “long-standing climate champion” while the Democratic campaign group Climate Power swiftly hailed her as “the next president of the United States”.
Jack Lobel, a spokesperson for Voters of Tomorrow, a youth group that works to boost voter turnout among young voters, said the group was “very optimistic” about Harris’s possible climate policy.
“There’s no bigger danger to our environment and our future as Gen Z-ers more broadly than Donald Trump,” he said.
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