KAMALA’S CLIMATE — Sustainability-minded voters still coming to terms with the prospect of a Democratic ticket headed by Vice President Kamala Harris have plenty of questions about where she stands on key issues. And we may find some answers by looking into her past. Early signs suggest that she might re-energize some of the young environmental crowd that had soured on President Joe Biden — and she's already locked up endorsements from four big green groups that backed him before he decided to end his campaign. During her tenure as California attorney general, Harris defended the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and amassed tens of millions of dollars against large fossil fuel companies. While serving in the U.S. Senate, she signed onto the Green New Deal, sponsored legislation to better address cumulative impacts on overburdened communities and proposed a $10 trillion climate plan, Kelsey Tamborrino reports. There’s good reason to think Harris would continue, and possibly even expand, Biden’s focus on equity and the disproportionate impacts that overburdened low-income and communities of color face from pollution. Harris was into environmental justice issues before it was cool. She created a unit focused on the issue in 2005 when she was serving as San Francisco district attorney. “I remember as DA, she was very focused on pollution issues,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who worked on her campaign for that office, told your host. “She was obviously very serious about prosecuting violent crime. But she also was always serious about holding corporate polluters accountable and making sure that no one is above the law.” Harris' disdain for fracking for fossil fuel extraction is also well-documented. She even sued the Obama administration as California AG to stop plans to frack off the state’s coastline. While she walked back her stance to align with Biden’s opposition to banning it once she was tapped to be his running mate, that history of opposition could come back to haunt her in Pennsylvania, an energy-rich swing state that could be pivotal in November, Brian Dabbs and Heather Richards report for POLITICO’s E&E News. “Harris will be more open to attack on anti-fracking positions,” said Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College. "While fracking isn't a highly salient issue to most Pennsylvania voters, the issue can have an impact on a key slice of the electorate in a state where presidential elections are won on the margins."
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