Young climate activists favor Harris over Biden despite her environmental victories

President Joe Biden may have passed the United States’ most significant climate legislation ever, but many young environmental activists say they see Kamala Harris as stronger on the issue.

Representatives from 11 organizations dedicated to raising young voters’ concerns about climate change said Harris’ record of going after big oil companies as a prosecutor and her co-sponsorship of the Green New Deal as a senator make her a more attractive candidate than Biden. despite its environmental victories.

“She has a track record of holding Big Oil accountable in a way we haven’t been able to do in the last four years,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, 26, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, which pushes for government interventions. to tackle climate change.

The Green New Deal Network, a coalition of 19 progressive environmental and social justice organizations, including the Sunrise Movement, endorsed Harris this week but had not previously issued an endorsement for Biden.

The Biden administration’s record on climate issues has been relatively strong: the Inflation Reduction Act, the greater investment in climate action in US history, it has allocated almost $370 billion to environmental efforts. And the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act included investments in clean energy, electric vehicle infrastructure, public transportation and climate resilience work.

But several young climate activists, ages 16 to 29, said for themselves that the expansion of the fossil fuel industry during Biden’s presidency has overshadowed those successes.

Oil companies made higher profits and U.S. oil exports were higher under Biden than under President Donald Trump, Reuters report. Biden also approved the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska and the accelerated construction of Mountain Valley Gas Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia.

“It’s frankly frustrating to see that this current administration, despite claiming leadership on climate, has approved so many fossil fuel projects,” said Keanu Arpels-Josiah, 19, organizer of Fridays for Future, the youth-led international climate group that started by Greta Thunberg.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Dana Fisher, director of the Center for Environment, Community and Equity at American University, said it’s not that young voters are ignoring Biden’s work on climate — they just want to see more.

“Young people know it’s not enough because they recognize the severity of the climate crisis,” Fisher said.

She added that some young climate leaders told her in the spring that they were discouraging their members from voting in the presidential election.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Don’t you remember what happened in 2000?’” Fisher said, referring to the razor-thin margin that decided that year’s presidential election. “Which, of course, didn’t happen, because if they were alive, they would look like they were wearing diapers. It’s very difficult to have a long-term vision when you’re younger.”

Since Biden dropped out of the race, Fisher said, the young climate activists she’s spoken to seem more likely to vote.

Harris’ young supporters highlighted the deals she reached as California attorney general with Chevron, SHOVEL It is ConocoPhillips on the handling of hazardous materials.

“Biden is much more moderate in terms of his political approach, whereas Kamala is not afraid to address environmental and climate policy in a way that really gets to the root, especially with polluters,” said Iris Zhan, 20, a youth consultant . board member of the Global Youth Storytelling and Research Lab, which engages youth leaders in climate and environmental justice research.

Harris mentioned this early career work in some of her early campaign appearances.

“As district attorney, to go after polluters, I created one of the first environmental justice units in our country,” she said. said on July 22 in Wilmington, Delaware, referring to her time as San Francisco district attorney. “Donald Trump was at Mar-a-Lago and told Big Oil lobbyists that he would accept their offer for a billion-dollar campaign contribution.”

Harris’ California background also seems to resonate with some young environmentalists.

Zanagee Artis, 24, co-founder of a climate justice organization called Zero Hour, said that because California regularly experiences the effects of the climate crisis — droughts, heat waves, wildfires — this could “be a huge value for empathy.” with the young people who are fighting so hard for climate justice.”

Young activists pointed to Harris’ climate platform during her 2020 presidential campaignalso: at the time, she promised to invest 10 billion dollars in climate action over 10 years and set a goal of transitioning to a 100% clean energy economy by 2045.

“I want her to be able to set that standard and not just fall into what the Biden administration was doing,” said Natalie Bookout, who will turn 18 in October and leads the Charlotte, North Carolina, chapter of the Sunrise Movement.

Heather Hargreaves, executive director of campaigns at Climate Power, a communications organization focused on electing climate leaders, said it’s possible that among young people “there’s just a knowledge gap about what President Biden has done over the last three years.”

A Harris campaign spokeswoman said she plans to build on climate legislation in the Reducing Inflation Act, but did not respond to questions about her appeal over Biden with young environmentalists.

The spokesperson also clarified that although Harris said in 2019 she would ban fracking if elected president, she no longer supports such a ban.

“She doesn’t want to alienate people who are in fossil fuel extractive states,” Fisher said. “She’s not going to end up with as progressive a platform as she had when she was in California. However, will she be more progressive than Biden? I hope she is.

Harris has won endorsements from dozens of environmental groups and more than 350 leaders of the environmental movement – support that is typically not difficult for Democrats to obtain. She even seems to have raised the eyebrows of some young conservative environmentalists.

“Our members are mostly conservative, but at the end of the day, they like listening to younger elected officials because they realize that these elected officials have more skin in the game in the climate conversation,” said Stephen Perkins, 29, the director of operations at the American Conservation Coalition, a group that mobilizes Republican voters around climate action.

Among adults ages 18 to 29, 59% of respondents in a recent survey from Pew Research said that addressing global climate change should be a top foreign policy priority – a higher percentage than among any other age group surveyed.

Harris has been a presidential candidate for less than two weeks, so she has yet to go into the full details of her climate platform.

“We have a lot of time,” Fisher said.