Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersVice President Kamala Harris made only a fleeting reference to climate change and clean energy jobs in her acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday, capping a convention that has been muted on arguably the crowning achievement of Joe Biden’s presidency. “The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis” are at stake in the election, Harris warned. But she didn’t mention the Inflation Reduction Act and the domestic manufacturing renaissance it spurred, or give any indication of how her approach to energy and climate may differ from Biden’s, something many climate advocates had hoped to hear in the convention. Climate is a third rail for the Harris campaign. Anything she might say about the need to curb fossil fuel use risks alienating swing voters, especially in critical oil and gas states like Pennsylvania. Conversely, pointing to the record-high oil and gas production achieved under Biden is clearly a non-starter with the climate activists that make up an important part of her base. So there’s little to be gained from raising the issue at all, especially since polling indicates that climate isn’t something that most voters care much about either way. That puts the campaign in a predicament, because the most important and successful economic policy of the Biden administration, the IRA, was fundamentally a climate bill. But whereas Biden explicitly made fighting climate change a trademark issue, Harris seems more comfortable to let it play out in the background. Judging from the convention stage, the campaign’s strategy has been to minimize mentions of climate catastrophe; keep talk of IRA-related job growth fairly vague and less prominent than housing, inflation, and other issues; and delegate what climate conversation there is to surrogates like Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), both of whom focused on climate and the IRA in their speeches last night. |