Where Harris and Trump stand on climate change policies

Over the past few weeks, a series of punishing hurricanes once again illustrated the consequences of climate change. Climate policy is one of the many issues we’re covering in the run-up to Election Day. The divide between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on climate change is as stark as any issue facing the country. William Brangham reports.

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Geoff Bennett: Over the past few weeks, we have seen a series of punishing hurricanes once again illustrate the consequences of climate change.

Climate policy is one of the many issues we’re covering in our Promises and Policy segments in the run-up to Election Day. The divide between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on climate change is as stark as any issue the country is facing.

William Brangham has been covering this closely, and I spoke with him about it earlier this week.

William, it’s great to see you.

So, as Vice President Kamala Harris helped pass the largest government investment in clean energy and climate initiatives, on the trail, she often talks about climate change as a pocketbook issue, like the soaring insurance costs many homeowners face due to extreme weather. Help us understand her approach.

William Brangham: I think, on one level, she sees the polls that says the economy is the most important thing, hence that focus.

Secondarily, I think, on the issue of climate change and why she doesn’t drill into it that much, is that I think her campaign believes that, if you’re a climate change voter and that really matters to you, you’re already in her camp because of the things you mentioned, historic legislation, first of its kind in American history.

And her opponent has said climate change is a hoax and we don’t have to really deal with that. So, as you mentioned, she does talk about it. But, for instance, in her DNC speech, climate change was one clause in one sentence, and that was it. She often talks about it, as you say, as an economic issue.

She has said it’s a crisis. She has said it is urgent that we deal with it, but let’s take a listen to how she coaches this issue.

Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: We have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy, while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels.

Geoff Bennett: So she’s merging clean energy and fossil fuels there into one answer.

You mentioned Donald Trump, who has famously said that climate change is a hoax. How is he approaching this on the campaign trail?

William Brangham: Trump talks about climate change almost always as a means to attack Democrats for the policies they have enacted to address it. And so he says those things drive up costs for consumers at the gas pump. He says they hurt the economy. He calls them lunacy.

I mean, these are things like E.V., electric vehicle, mandates or promotions of wind or solar or battery manufacturing. Here’s how he often talks about the issue.

Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: When people talk about global warming, I say the ocean is going to go down 100th of an inch within the next 400 years. That’s not our problem. Our problem is nuclear warming.

William Brangham: Trump regularly dismisses the threat from sea level rise. I mean, he nonsensically says it will just create more oceanfront property.

He says this is really a nonexistent threat. So I just wanted to fact-check this one issue. The latest U.S. National Climate Assessment, on just the issue of sea level rise, I’m going to read you a little bit about what it says.

It says — quote — “Sea level rise threatens permanent inundation of infrastructure, including roadways, railways, ports, tunnels, and bridges, water treatment facilities, and power plants, and hospitals, schools, and military bases.”

That is trillions of dollars at risk from just one byproduct of a warming world. And as for this issue of nuclear winter, I’m not exactly sure what he’s talking about. There is no such thing as nuclear warming. That does not happen. If he’s talking about nuclear war, yes, that would have an enormous impact on the climate, but it would actually be likely a cooling effect because of the projected nuclear winter.

Geoff Bennett: Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

William Brangham: Exactly.

So Trump does say climate change is an issue, but only because Democrats are obsessing over it.

Geoff Bennett: So what would a potential Harris administration do as it relates to climate change?

William Brangham: Harris has not really laid out concrete policy. As you mentioned, she is coming off an administration that passed the most historic attempts to address climate change in American history, and she seems to imply there will be more of the same.

But, as you noted, Geoff, she keeps promoting all of the U.S. government’s attempts to boost energy production, green energy, at the same time that she brags about America’s oil and gas production. And there is an inherent tension there. The way we address climate change is to bring our emissions down, and the U.S. increasingly becoming the world’s gas station is not the way to do that.

And Harris, likely because she doesn’t want to be seen as attacking domestic energy production, doesn’t really reckon with this. She doesn’t really reconcile how those two competing motives will be reconciled in her administration.

Geoff Bennett: And what about Donald Trump? If he’s saying climate change doesn’t exist, it doesn’t pose a threat. I mean, what is he proposing to do about it, if anything?

William Brangham: Trump says on energy policy that he’s going to bring energy prices in half, cut them in half. It’s very difficult to do that. Global energy prices are set on the global market.

He has repeatedly said he is up for more and more oil and gas drilling, the famous “Drill, baby, drill,” although the U.S., as we mentioned, is already pumping out record amounts of oil and gas. Trump does not believe that addressing greenhouse gas emissions is an issue. He has said he will roll back environmental rules on the oil and gas industry. This is why he said to oil and gas executives, you ought to give me a billion dollars for my campaign because I’m going to help you guys out.

The Project 2025, the famous Heritage Foundation project, which Trump has said, I’m not a part of, that’s not me, even though it was written largely by people from his administration, they have laid out a very detailed energy and climate plan. And it is basically to abolish all climate-related actions by the federal government. It will roll back the incentives within the Inflation Reduction Act.

How much of that Trump could do if he was elected is unclear. He would need Congress and the Senate to do that. And, interestingly, in the Inflation Reduction Act, a lot of money has been seeded into Republican districts, into Republican states, and a lot of those local leaders love federal funding for a new battery manufacturing plant and all the jobs that that comes.

And they don’t want to see those things go away. So it’s unclear how far a Trump administration could really go. The promise he has made, though, is a whole-scale reversal of any action by the federal government to deal with the climate crisis.

Geoff Bennett: William Brangham, thanks so much for walking us through this. We appreciate it.

William Brangham: Thanks, Geoff.