In advance of the 2024 presidential election, The Chronicle is breaking down each candidate’s stance on priority issues, examining their platform and political history to keep voters in the Duke and Durham community informed. This week, we take a look at climate and environment issues:
Climate issues have come to the forefront of political discourse in recent years, especially for young voters.
A survey of nearly 16,000 individuals ages 16 to 25 published Oct. 17 in the Lancet Planetary Health journal found that 85% of respondents were worried about climate change and its impacts on people and the planet and 57.9% of whom were “very” or “extremely” worried.
Roughly 72% of respondents said they were likely to vote for candidates who supported “aggressive policies to reduce climate change” — including 85.5% of Democrats surveyed and 62.3% of Republicans.
Yet, the two major presidential candidates offer drastically different approaches to climate and environmental issues. Here’s what you should know about their platforms and records.
North Carolinian stances
A majority of North Carolina’s registered voters are in favor of a clean energy transition, according to a September 2023 poll by the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters.
Roughly 75% of surveyed voters view it as “important” for North Carolina to increase its use of clean and renewable energy sources, compared to 14% who see it as “somewhat important” and 11% who see it as “not important.” Broken down by political ideology, 94% of “left-leaning” respondents and 57% of “right-leaning” registered voters responded with a rating of “important.”
Around 62% of respondents also think it’s “important” for the state to “reduce its reliance on fossil fuel energy like coal, oil and natural gas,” compared to 14% who view doing so as “somewhat important” and 21% who view it as “not important.”
But although North Carolinians view climate action as important, it ranks relatively low on their overall list of priorities as voters. The environment was tied with abortion for last place in a March WRAL poll measuring voters’ top 10 issues.
Kamala Harris
Harris is running on a similar environmental platform to that of her predecessor, though she supported more progressive policies earlier in her political career.
As a prosecutor in California in the early 2000s, she created an environmental crimes unit, a rare move at the time. After being elected attorney general in 2010, she went after several oil companies for violations of environmental protection laws, securing multi-million dollar settlements.
In 2016, Harris joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general working to combat climate change by curbing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. She also defended then-President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan and the Environmental Protection Agency’s New Source Performance Standards, both of which aimed to further reduce emissions.
As a senator, she co-sponsored the Green New Deal, which called for a 10-year plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, an upgraded power grid and hazardous waste clean-up. She also introduced a “Climate Equity Act” in 2020, which would have established new federal offices to enhance government accountability for considering climate issues with new legislation and regulations.
During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris expressed support for a ban on fracking — a controversial natural gas extraction process — a stance she has since walked back on. Her platform also prioritized environmental justice issues and promised a “clean economy no later than 2045.”
As vice president, Harris contributed to several policies that have led the Biden-Harris administration to be celebrated by many for taking “more climate action than any other in history.” The Democratic nominee is now relying heavily on these accomplishments in her personal campaign messaging.
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden joined the Paris Agreement, an international climate action treaty that Trump withdrew the U.S. from during his time in office. He also signed a number of executive orders intended to promote climate action across the federal government, including by creating several new federal offices to oversee climate policy, such as the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy and the National Climate Task Force.
In April 2021, Biden announced an ambitious plan to cut national greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. Public response to his approach was mixed, though the divide was largely along party lines.
To meet this goal, the administration has made historic investments in developing a “clean economy.”
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has been touted by the government as “the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history” at $370 billion. The bill, which Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass, promotes manufacturing and energy infrastructure developments through a combination of grants, loans and tax incentives.
The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — often referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — also invests in environmental action through the creation of jobs in the clean energy sector and providing federal dollars for pollution clean-up initiatives.
The Biden-Harris administration has also taken steps to grow the nation’s electric vehicle infrastructure, setting a target in 2021 to have half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 net-zero through a combination of EV types. To aid in this transition, the administration allocated funds to build a network of 500,000 EV charging stations across the country.
According to a July 2022 Pew Research poll, 55% of Americans opposed phasing out gasoline-powered cars, although 42% said they would consider purchasing an EV in the future.
However, Biden and Harris have faced criticism from both sides of the aisle for their approach to domestic energy production.
The oil industry hit record high levels of production and profits over the past four years, a fact Harris has pointed to at recent campaign appearances, likely in an attempt to engage moderate voters. Natural gas production has also increased, though some have argued that many of the new drilling permits signed by Biden are the result of Trump-era leases that suffered production delays.
The administration instituted a temporary moratorium on new leases for oil and gas drilling in January 2021, but the policy’s effectiveness was hindered by a series of blocks and reversals in the courts. Biden has since moved to block additional proposed drilling and mining projects on federal lands.
Environmental activists on the left have criticized the administration for continuing to invest in fossil fuel energy production, while Republicans have asserted that new environmental standards are too harsh, raising prices and costing jobs.
Harris looks to toe the line between pursuing ambitious climate action and reassuring the electorate of the nation’s energy security.
If elected, she has promised to enhance climate resilience and hold environmental polluters accountable while also lowering household energy bills and creating “millions” of new jobs. She has committed to “global cooperation” to combat the climate crisis, emphasizing above all protecting Americans’ “freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”
Donald Trump
Meanwhile, Trump’s environmental platform has historically included undoing policies enacted by Democratic administrations.
Trump has questioned the source of climate change, acknowledging its existence but challenging whether the phenomenon is manmade. This stance departs from his prior comments, including a Twitter post in 2012 suggesting that the concept of global warming was created by the Chinese government for an economic advantage.
Despite his change in rhetoric, Trump has followed through on many of his campaign promises to cut back on environmental regulations and limit U.S. climate action.
Once elected, Trump quickly moved to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in 2017, though the nation’s official exit went into effect in November 2020 because of rules built into the agreement.
According to a 2021 analysis by The New York Times, the then-president succeeded in rolling back over 100 environmental rules, spanning pollution regulations, emissions reduction targets, toxic substance policies and more. The Trump administration also reduced wildlife protections and conservation laws to make way for oil and gas leasing, part of its strategy to promote U.S. energy independence.
After a four-year hiatus, Trump now looks to roll back Biden’s new climate policies, the same way he did many of Obama’s during his first.
The Republican nominee has promised to “cancel” emission regulations on fossil fuel plants, should he secure a second term. His 2024 platform advocates for “unleash[ing] American energy,” largely through investment in oil, natural gas and nuclear power sources. He has also vowed to “terminat[e] the Socialist Green New Deal.”
At a May dinner with fossil fuel executives and lobbyists at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump suggested they donate $1 billion to his campaign because of his planned regulation rollbacks.
He has also taken a firm stance against EV investment, committing to cancel the Biden-era mandate and prevent “the importation of Chinese vehicles.”
While his platform does not include language around environmental protection — outside of making American cities “safe, clean and beautiful again,” Trump has maintained at campaign events that he supports policies to ensure clean air and water.
“I’m an environmentalist,” he said at a Wisconsin rally earlier this month. “… I want clean air, clean water and jobs.”
Other candidates
Independent candidate Cornel West advocates for environmental justice and the recognition of “clean air, clean water and a nourishing environment” as “inalienable rights.” He promotes nationalization of the fossil fuel industry, halting oil and gas projects, paying “climate reparations,” ending water privatization and anticipating climate-induced human displacement.
Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver promises to “transform environmental policy by slashing red tape and embracing market-driven, science-backed solutions.” He is a strong advocate of nuclear power and deregulating the energy industry.
Green Party nominee Jill Stein places a significant emphasis on environmental issues in her platform, which centers around three pillars of “people,” “planet” and “peace.”
She is a strong advocate for the Party’s “Real Green New Deal,” which calls for “100% clean energy, zero greenhouse gas emissions and economic security for all within a decade” to be achieved through an expansion of federal power. Stein also promises to establish an Office of Climate Mobilization, ensure a “just transition” for workers moving out of the fossil fuel industry and restructure the agricultural sector into “cooperatives and public enterprises democratically owned by and serving consumers and working farmers.”
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Zoe Kolenovsky is a Trinity junior and news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.