Fighting Climate Change Could Define Kamala Harris’ Vice Presidency. Watch Our Interview With Her.

In an exclusive 2019 chat with Climate Desk, Harris laid out her plans.

MSNBC, Zuma

Kamala Harris represents a series of historic firsts—she will be the first woman vice president, the first Black vice president, and the first Asian American vice president. She’ll also be the first-ever vice president who has devised a comprehensive plan to address climate change—and as the tie-breaking vote in the evenly split Senate, she’ll have plenty of opportunity to fight for the environment. 

Harris’ home state of California has been hammered by longer wildfire seasons, blackouts from extreme heat, and drought. Harris doesn’t shy away from connecting these events to manmade climate change. When I sat down with her in Dubuque, Iowa, a year before she joined the presidential ticket, she was still in the midst of her own presidential campaign. “For me this issue of the climate crisis relates to every aspect of what we do,” she said.

Her remarks to me in October 2019 captured some of the themes that are starting to define the Biden administration’s all-hands-on-deck approach to the climate crisis: It’s not something the Environmental Protection Agency can address alone. “Every branch has a role in this responsibility.” 

Harris’ climate plan didn’t get much attention during her presidential run, but it was impressive: Her vision of the Green New Deal included a staggering economic investment in clean energy and infrastructure. She spoke about the importance of including low-income and communities of color in the fight against pollution and climate change; her Climate Equity Act, introduced first in 2019 with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2019, requires that any environmental legislation receive an equity score to assess its impact on frontline communities.

Another theme from my interview with Harris was her insistence that the Department of Justice should investigate and rein in manipulative oil and gas industry practices. Her actual record on that is more mixed: As California attorney general, Harris led an investigation into whether ExxonMobil misled consumers about climate change, but she did not go as far as to issue subpoenas. And although she has at times embellished her history of suing and winning against Big Oil, she has spoken forcefully about holding polluters accountable. “Let’s get them not only in the pocket book, but let’s make sure there are serious penalties for their behaviors,” she said. That means taking aim at the “whole apparatus built around them” that’s built to protect the dominance of fossil fuels. And, she emphasized, that may not just mean the major oil companies, but other players, like gas-reliant utilities. “I think everyone who is part of misinforming the public, misleading the public and false advertising should be held accountable,” she said.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate