In her debate with Donald Trump, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris proudly boasted about America’s energy production. “I am proud that as Vice President over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels,” Harris declared.
Can we reconcile this paradoxical position?
The Harris-Walz campaign assures us that we can. It suggests that, in the name of national security, record oil and gas production can exist alongside clean energy to drive down energy costs for Americans and reduce our reliance on foreign oil. And according to the campaign, we can have all of this without compromising our climate commitments. In its economic program, “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” the campaign brags that America has become a net exporter of oil all while “driving down emissions.”
Unfortunately, Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz can’t have their cake and eat it too. The reality is, and has always been, that more oil means more carbon. While it is true that carbon emissions have declined within the United States in recent years, when we take into account the carbon content of American fossil fuel exports, American emissions have risen overall.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), between 2021 and 2023 the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 Eq.) emissions of American fossil fuel exports rose 18 percent, and domestic CO2 Eq. emissions declined only 2 percent. The simple fact is that Democrats cannot pursue decarbonization and fossil fuel expansion at the same time. At the end of the day, what matters is not where, but how much carbon is burned.
James Hassett
The only (and very brief) section on energy in the campaign’s platform reveals an effort to greenwash a lot of dirty oil. Its data shows that the United States has become the largest oil producer in the world, even surpassing Saudi Arabia in 2017. Now, of the top seven oil producers in the world, the United States accounts for 72 percent of oil production.
Graph from the Harris-Walz campaign platform: "A New Way Forward: A Plan to Lower Costs and Create an Opportunity Economy."
Just below this alarming graph, the campaign showcases the surge in renewable electricity generation, as if to soothe concerns that the spike in oil production might be at odds with fighting climate change. But any comfort one may take from the rapid increase in renewables is broken by the fact that oil production still far outpaced renewable production that year. And America produced even more natural gas than oil in 2023. Under Harris’s program, clean energy becomes just one small part of the equation to meet U.S. energy needs, rather than a means to reach net-zero emissions.
Unsurprisingly, the pace of fossil fuel expansion far surpasses the development of renewables. Between 2021, when President Joe Biden took office, and 2023, oil production outpaced wind power by 33 percent. While solar generation has increased at a higher rate than natural gas (45 percent and 10 percent, respectively), in absolute numbers natural gas far exceeds solar. During this period, natural gas added 908 TWh to the energy grid. Solar added only 75 TWh. There is simply no world in which the expansion of fossil fuels is compatible with a transition to a clean energy economy.
The Biden Administration’s key pieces of legislation—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the CHIPS and Science Act—have significantly accelerated the expansion of clean energy in the United States. But clean energy isn’t meant to be an addition to existing fossil fuel sources. A net-zero economy requires clean energy to replace, not supplement, fossil fuels.
If U.S. fossil fuel exports are rising at the same or higher rate that U.S. emissions are declining, then the United States is making no progress at all towards its net-zero commitments. We may not be burning all that extra oil ourselves, but wherever we ship it, it will be used.
Even using EIA data on total energy exports underestimates the carbon footprint of U.S. fossil fuel exports. Multiple studies have suggested that natural gas’s total emissions impact is on par or even greater than coal.
Of course, all these uncounted emissions that form part of the United States’ so-called energy independence come at the price of greater climate disasters. Symons calculates that if demand, consumption, and production of oil and gas continue to surge, climate damages from export emissions could be as high as $18.7 trillion by 2050. So much for the energy savings.
Ultimately, record oil and gas production only undermines the United States’ security and threatens the livelihood of its citizens. The content of the Harris-Walz program, “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” only reinforces the notion that the campaign has sidelined climate change as an issue almost entirely.
In contrast to the ambitious climate agenda that Biden campaigned on in 2020, Harris is running a campaign that rides the coattails of the Biden Administration’s achievements without promising much more.
In terms of climate actions, Harris and Walz are offering only a few crumbs. They promise to cut “red tape” to hasten clean energy projects; to “unlock upgrades, efficiencies, and faster construction” of the electrical grid; to reduce “emissions in steel and iron production;” and to expand “clean energy manufacturing and innovation.”
That’s the extent of it. In fact, the word “climate” only appears twice in the entire program. No details, no policy prescriptions, not even an acknowledgement of the threats posed by climate change or a passing shot at Republicans for denying its existence. No mention of net-zero targets, the Paris Climate Agreement, or 2030 or 2050 emissions goals. If Harris isn’t willing to advocate for a clean energy transition as part of her campaign, it doesn’t bode well for her future presidency.
Many climate advocates expressed disappointment with Harris’s lack of focus on climate during the Democratic National Convention in August, where she made only one fleeting comment about the climate crisis. With the campaign period nearly over, we probably won’t get much more. As Collin Rees, the campaign manager at Oil Change U.S., put it to Politico, “We very rarely to almost never see politicians not talk about something and then get into office and then take huge strides forward on it. That’s simply not how our system works.”
Perhaps the Harris campaign believes that tacking to the right and courting unpopular never-Trumpers like Liz Cheney will invite more votes from independents and Republicans. But this ignores the fact that climate has become a more salient issue even among the right. A recent environmental report argues that Biden’s climate agenda in 2020 won him the election.
Most Americans do not envision a future without fossil fuels, but that’s because we all live in a world still dominated by them. Advocating for policies like a carbon tax or a ban on fracking might be political poison now, but the more politicians push for clean energy, the more its benefits will become apparent, and the more likely public opinion will shift.
Even ignoring the climate costs of America’s fossil fuel emissions, the benefits of clean energy outweigh fossil fuel investment. Take jobs, for example: Despite rising production, jobs within the fossil fuel industry are declining across the board because of record-breaking productivity and efficiency gains that have come at the cost of employment. The top gas-producing counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia—dubbed “Frackalachia”—have lost a net 10,000 jobs and 50,000 in population since 2008. Meanwhile, the clean energy sector added over 250,000 jobs nationwide in 2023 with a greater unionization rate than the rest of the energy sector. That same year it accounted for more than half of all new energy sector jobs despite its size relative to the fossil fuel industry.
What the Harris-Walz campaign doesn’t recognize is that campaigning on lower energy costs isn’t a vision for the future. Playing it safe is a losing strategy. It’s a bid for normalcy when voters find the status quo unsatisfying and unfair. Harris has an opportunity to shape a new vision for the country. Fighting against climate change is a fight for the future.
Right now, Harris’s energy plan tries to have it both ways. But the Democrats are never going to out-frack Republicans. The Republicans are the party of Big Oil and voters know this. Boasting about record oil production isn’t going to get votes from fossil fuel enthusiasts, but it will hasten the destruction of our planet.
Americans want to know what kind of President Kamala Harris will be, not just who she won’t be. Fossil fuels will eventually become a thing of the past. Why not give voters a taste of the future?