| The Republican vice presidential nominee pitched a (hypothetical) climate plan at Tuesday night's debate that … sounded a lot like the Democrats' 2022 climate law. Ohio Sen. JD Vance said that if climate change is really driven by carbon pollution (a fact, by the way), then the country should invest heavily in domestic manufacturing. “Let’s just say that’s true, for the sake of argument,” Vance said near the beginning of a policy-laden debate that featured an unheard-of seven minutes and 13 seconds on climate change. “The answer is you want to reshore as much manufacturing as possible, and you want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America.” That might sound familiar because it’s the backbone of President Joe Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest-ever investment in domestic clean energy production. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate — though the climate law hasn’t loomed large in her campaign messaging. Walz goes there: Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was quick to point to the IRA, offering perhaps the Harris campaign’s most robust promotion of the law, which he said has created hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. Those include an expected 2,000 jobs in electric vehicle manufacturing in Jeffersonville, Ohio — Vance’s home state. Former President Donald Trump has vowed to claw back unspent IRA money (an idea that’s dividing his party), and Vance has previously derided the measure as a “Green New Scam” that has sent jobs and resources to China. On Tuesday, Walz also framed the law as part of Harris’ “all of the above” energy strategy, using a term that has all but disappeared from Democratic vernacular in recent memory as the party has pushed a transition away from fossil fuels. Walz and Harris have begun embracing the United States’ record oil and natural gas production as a means of attracting voters and countering Republican attacks about energy prices. “We’re producing more natural gas and more oil [than] at any time than we ever have,” Walz said. “We’re also producing more clean energy.” Vance insisted, however, that the IRA's clean energy subsidies are responsible for shipping manufacturing overseas. “You’re going to make the economy dirtier," he said. "We should be making more of those [solar] panels here in the United States of America.” “We are,” Walz interjected. “In Minnesota.” The climate law has sparked a manufacturing boom in the U.S. But the country is still catching up to China, which has spent years heavily subsidizing clean energy technologies. Biden, like Trump before him, has hiked duties on a host of Chinese-made green goods in a bid to safeguard the emerging U.S. industry.
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