Countdown to Philadelphia. That's where Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday is expected to unveil her first major decision as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president: her running mate. Her choice of cities has turned the spotlight on the state's first-term governor, Josh Shapiro, a former attorney general who’s navigated the tricky energy and environmental politics of this electoral battleground state. As attorney general, Shapiro took on gas industry misdeeds, I wrote yesterday. As governor, he has poured money into plugging some of the state’s 350,000 abandoned oil and gas wells. To his fans, Shapiro is credited for using a mixed bag of approaches to address years of rancor over how far to go to police the wave of drilling that's washed across the state in recent years; and for threading tough climate policy needles such as the future of a carbon cap-and-trade program. Barry Rabe, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told me, "Shapiro has found a way to play good cop and bad cop." His critics, particularly environmentalists, would like to see a lot more "bad cop." Harris has disavowed an old position that fracking should be banned. But Donald Trump isn't going to let her forget her past position. And the "drill, baby, drill" Republican is making sure voters know it, too. That's where Shapiro comes in. He entered the 2022 election for governor as the attorney who took on the gas drilling industry with high-profile grand jury investigations that yielded criminal charges. As governor he's become more friendly to drilling. He entered an alliance with CNX Resources, a major driller, to gather more information about pollution from several of the company’s drilling sites. CNX and Shapiro have promoted it as "radical transparency." He has also turned away from his predecessor's support for a regional cap-and-trade program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), that was unpopular with unions. He wants to replace it with a legislative proposal for a new “cap-and-invest” program for reducing climate-damaging emissions from the power sector. ‘Nothing to lose’
Pennsylvania is an energy producing state, known for its coal mines, and it's the No. 2 producer of gas in the country. But it's not like deep-red Texas or West Virginia. It has big urban areas, liberal suburbs and a proud union tradition. That keeps the state's politics purple and makes it the big-man-on-campus of the electoral college. Those who think he's cracked the code for Democrats on energy issues point to his ability to identify popular policies. For example, Ben Storrow reported today on the success of his efforts to leverage federal dollars to plug 200 of the state's oil and gas wells. Generally, it's a win-win all the way around. It puts people to work — often the same people who'd otherwise be drilling gas wells —and cleans up pollution. But his newfound friendship with industry has made him some enemies. What Shapiro and his allies might see as balance, some of his former supporters in the environmental community see as a bait and switch. For example, the 2,500 foot setback recommendation in his grand jury report became, in his partnership with CNX, a 600-foot buffer for one company's new wells. “We had so much hope, and now we feel like we have nothing to lose, really, in terms of speaking out, because we don't have any kind of seat at the table,” said Shannon Smith, executive director of FracTracker Alliance, a Pennsylvania-based watchdog group.
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