Climate activists view Harris as their champion, and now she’s paired with Walz, a climate governor

Vice President Kamala Harris took extreme positions on climate and energy prior to her run for president.

Harris supported a ban on fracking, referred to global warming as an “existential threat,” and as a California senator co-sponsored the Green New Deal, an ambitious Democratic plan to essentially transition the U.S. and its economy away from fossil fuel.

And as vice president, she cast the tie-breaking Senate vote that led to Congress' passage of the roughly $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act that includes renewable energy initiatives. 

A Harris campaign official told The Hill last month that she no longer supports fracking while also touting Harris’ support for the multi-billion-dollar law and record-high energy production during the Biden administration. Aside from this statement, Harris hasn’t had a lot to say recently about her positions on energy.

There are, however, indications she will pursue a much more aggressive climate agenda than President Biden. Harris has received glowing support from radical climate activists who want to eliminate the fossil fuel industry in a generation, and she selected progressive Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. 

“He is a New Green Dealer of the highest order. You just look at his record as governor to see that it's just been one progressive energy and environmental policy after the other,” André Béliveau, senior manager of energy policy with the Commonwealth Foundation, a free-market advocacy group based in Pennsylvania, told Just the News. 

Agenda inflation

During his career in the House, Walz supported a cap-and-trade bill that that would have killed 2.5 million jobs and increased electricity rates by 90%, according to the American Energy Alliance.

From 2015 to 2016, he received a score of 7% on the AEA "Energy Scorecard" based on his voting record in Congress.

Isaac Orr, vice president of research for Always On Energy Research, told Just the News that, as governor, Walz's energy policies followed a playbook right out of California. He had a tendency to campaign on modest proposals, which were inflated once he got into office. 

“At every possible opportunity, Tim Walz has said, if there's a California energy policy, I should try to implement that” in Minnesota, Orr said.

As he argued on his “Energy Bad Boys” Substack, which he writes with Mitch Rolling, director of research at Always On, Walz also supported raising gas taxes.

During his 2018 campaign for governor, he stated he was for a “modest” increase in the gas tax, but never committed to a specific amount. Once elected, he sought to raise it by $0.20, a 70% increase. 

“That was our first flavor of the state under Walz,” Orr said. 

The increase would have made Minnesota's gas tax the fourth-highest in the U.S., behind Washington, California and Pennsylvania. 

Walz also said during his campaign, in an interview the Minneapolis Star Tribune, that he was satisfied with state officials’ decision to move forward on replacing a corroded pipeline, Enbrige’s Line 3, which crosses Northern Minnesota.

Once in office, however, the governor delayed it, arguing the project needs not only a building permit, but a “social permit.”

Orr said also Walz ignored public support and legal approval of the project, deciding instead to give in to climate activists. 

“That saga went on for years, even though that corroding pipeline basically posed a larger threat to the environment than not replacing it,” he said. 

Blackout bill

Walz also adopted what Orr calls the “blackout bill.”

Walz had campaigned on a goal of committing the state to 50% renewable energy by 2030. After getting into office, he pursued a much more ambitious goal of 100% carbon-free energy by 2050. Two years later, Orr said, Walz pushed the target date up to 2040. 

“Our analysis of that legislation found out that it was going to cost residential customers $1,642 per year, every year through 2050. It’s going to devastate manufacturing, which is a huge pillar of the economy, especially in rural towns like in Minnesota,” Orr said. 

Since Minnesota began setting wind and solar mandates in 2007, its electricity prices have increased 1.67 times faster than the national average. The costs have already begun to deindustrialize the state. In March, the Northern Foundry in Hibbing, Minnesota, announced it was shutting its doors as a result of rising electricity prices. 

John Hinderaker, president of Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota think tank supporting free enterprise and limited government, told Just the News that the center’s analysis of Walz’s 100% renewable energy goals found that they would cost the state about $313 billion and cause extensive reliability issues. 

“We have been pounding away on that theme, that electricity prices are rising, and this is the reason why," he said. "It hasn’t yet become a big political issue. It's been overshadowed, I think, by other aspects of the cost of living, like groceries and houses. But as they continue down this path, or assuming they do continue down this path – and of course, we'll continue to campaign against it in every step of the way – those prices inexorably are going to keep rising." 

Walz has also tried to implement a low-carbon fuel standard, which a Center for the American Experiment analysis found would increase gasoline prices.

The average Minnesota family would have to pay an extra $175 a year at the pump, and the policy would produce zero measurable environmental benefits, the analysis found. The proposal failed to pass the in the legislature. 

“That was a bridge too far for some of the Democrats at the legislature,” Hinderaker said, but Walz was pursuing other climate schemes, such as a ban on gas-powered lawn mowers. 

Birds of a feather

Besides pairing up with a climate crusader, Harris is also winning endorsements from climate activists who say she’s going to help them advance their agendas, even more so than Biden has. 

The Green New Deal Network, a coalition of several anti-fossil fuel groups, endorsed her for president earlier this month. 

“The Kamala Coalition will defeat climate change, lower costs, and deliver what working people need, regardless of their race, class, gender or geography. This election will come down to groups like ours turning our people out, and we're all in,” Kaniela Ing, national director for the network, said in a statement. 

Ing told Inside Climate News that Harris has “really lit a candle of hope for a lot of us that have been in the doldrums for the past year or so,” suggesting Biden wasn’t radical enough for the group. 

The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, the Sierra Club and Clean Energy for America Action have also gotten behind Harris’ campaign. 

Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media and co-founder of 350.org, argued in the activist publication Common Dreams that Harris is the “perfect person” to help them advance climate litigation against oil companies, aimed at forcing energy producers into bankruptcy as a means to prohibit fossil fuel use.

Experts widely agree that rapidly eliminating fossil fuels would effectively destroy civilization, because the materials that make it possible – ammonia, concrete, steel and plastics – can’t be produced without them. 

Béliveau with the Commonwealth Foundation said that’s the goal at the heart of these agendas.

“These are not policies that are interested in actual trade offs or discussing real world scenarios," he said. "They do not care about our economic environment at all. These are policies that are focused on putting a tax on modern life, and they are truly, I think, about de-growth."

Based on her supporters’ hopes and her choice of running mate, a Harris administration will at the very least continue Biden’s climate agenda. But it may very well take it a lot further.