Why environmental justice leaders see an ally in Kamala Harris

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Catherine Coleman Flowers, an environmental justice activist, grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, where contaminated water and raw sewage have long plagued the predominantly African-American community. She has fought for basic sanitation infrastructure in the South since 2002, but it wasn’t until the Biden administration that she felt her concerns were being taken seriously at the federal level.

The Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation and the administration directed nearly $2 million to help solve her county’s sanitation issues. Nationally, the administration implemented the Justice40 Initiative , which allocates 40 percent of certain climate, clean energy and sustainable infrastructure funding to disadvantaged communities to address problems like these. “This administration heard us,” Flowers said.

Now, Flowers is among the climate and environmental justice activists who are supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ run for the presidency — a shift for a group that was not as unified behind Biden’s reelection bid. Last week, she joined over 350 advocates, policy makers and politicians in signing a letter endorsing Harris.

“We know that protecting our planet for ourselves and future generations requires the kind of bold leadership that Kamala Harris has demonstrated her whole life,” the letter says. “We are proud to support her and be in the fight against climate change with her.”

Activists like Flowers are hoping that if Harris becomes president, she’ll push harder than the Biden administration has on addressing the climate crisis. “We need to be more serious than we have been about dealing with climate change,” Flowers said. “We need to make sure that marginalized communities are prepared to deal with the onslaught that’s already happened with the heat, wildfires, with these utility bills that are going to be extremely high because it’s extreme weather.”

So far, Harris hasn’t laid out a formal platform on climate. Her track record in her roles as the California attorney general and a U.S. senator offers a peek into where she might be headed — and experts are already weighing in on the ways they hope she’ll be different than her predecessor.

For example, the Green New Deal Network, a coalition that represents young environmental activists, never endorsed Biden, holding against him the fact that he included oil and gas heavyweights in a coalition of climate and environmental justice groups, said Kaniela Ing, national director of the network.

The hope, Ing said, is that a coalition built by Harris will be different, bringing together “unions, racial justice groups, gender justice groups, people who care about economic rights.”

One reassuring element of her candidacy was her choice of running mate: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who joined the ticket on Tuesday . In 2023, Walz signed a law requiring all of the state’s electricity to come from clean energy, like solar and wind, by 2040 — climate legislation that advocates say is a model for other states. He also worked with state Democrats to pass over 40 climate initiatives in the same legislative session, including a law that makes it easier to permit renewable energy projects.

“We applaud Vice President Harris for choosing a running mate who shares her commitment to acting on climate and know that together, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will build on the Biden-Harris administration’s historic progress on climate, clean energy, environmental justice, conservation, democracy, and so much more,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, a senior vice president for the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, said in a news release.

As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking Senate vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest piece of climate legislation in history. It earmarked $369 billion to help the country transition away from fossil fuels, funds programs to reduce pollution in low-income communities, build out clean energy infrastructure and bolster community resiliency to the climate crisis by lowering energy costs and investing in affordable housing upgrades.

As a U.S. senator, Harris was a co-sponsor on the Green New Deal , a congressional resolution in 2019 that called for lowering carbon emissions while creating well-paying jobs and helping the communities most affected by climate change adapt.

She introduced the Water Justice Act in 2019, which would have reduced water bills for low-income people and funded tests and upgrades for water systems in schools and communities that have struggled with lead and other contaminants. She also introduced the Climate Equity Act in 2020, which would have measured the effect any environmental legislation or regulation has on disadvantaged communities. Neither of these bills passed, but advocates say they show Harris’ track record of pushing for environmental justice.

“I think she’s strong at the new green economy,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a nonprofit that fights environmental racism. “She championed electric school buses and other key issues. … And then looking at her support of the Inflation Reduction Act and her role in helping to push some of that climate law ahead with Biden — you know, she’s clearly been a champion for the environmental agenda.”

Harris’ record of holding fossil fuel companies accountable has also made her a more favorable candidate among progressive green groups that didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the Biden administration. Previously, as California’s Attorney General, she won over $50 million in settlements from three major oil companies and investigated whether Exxon Mobil misled the public about what it knew regarding the role fossil fuels play in climate change , though she did not end up suing the oil giant.

Harris, who could be the first woman of color to serve as president, also brings an intersectionality to environmental work: She has a strong record on reproductive rights and child care , issues that are intertwined with the fight for environmental justice through a shared goal of raising children in safe and healthy environments. She articulated this connection in 2019, at a campaign event during her first run for president: “I care about the environment not because I have any particular desire to hug a tree, but I have a strong desire to hug a healthy baby. This literally comes down to clean air and clean water.”

As vice president, Harris pushed for child care funding to be included in the Build Back Better legislation, which later became the Inflation Reduction Act. During the negotiations, “her role was making sure it was climate, care, jobs and justice,” Ing said. “She was really championing that care side of it, which to me is really important when we are talking about a Green New Deal or broad industrial investments.”

The Inflation Reduction Act spurred job creation in construction and clean energy — industries that have historically failed to attract women , with child care being one of women’s biggest barriers to entry. The historic bill had originally allocated $390 billion for child care infrastructure and funding universal pre-K, but the funding was cut in negotiations. The Biden administration has instead incentivized child care through the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests in semiconductor manufacturing and requires companies who receive federal grants to provide a child care plan.

The alternative to Harris is Republican nominee Donald Trump, who rolled back over 100 environmental regulations during his presidency and has called climate change a hoax . At a recent campaign rally, Harris also pointed out that Trump has asked oil industry executives to bankroll his campaign to the tune of $1 billion .

“On the other hand, we are running a people-powered campaign,” Harris said.

Grassroots organizers like Flowers see the fight for environmental justice as being on the line in this election; she worries a vote for Trump would disenfranchise the same people who make up this movement.

“One of the reasons why we have environmental justice communities is because there was no real democracy, and the people in those communities were not asked their opinion,” she said. “They didn’t have a vote to determine whether or not their water would be polluted, or their air would be polluted, or their soil would be contaminated.”

“We’re hopeful that we can get to some long-term solutions with the election of President Harris,” Flowers said. “If she wins, we can continue this fight with a friend in the White House.”