Harris is not a Climate Candidate
She is pro climate destruction
It is absurd to even be writing this, but Kamala Harris is not a climate candidate.
Nevertheless, climate groups such as Sunrise and Climate Defiance have been pushing her as such. Climate Defiance recently endorsed Kamala, saying “Harris is not the visionary we need, but she is the leader we can pressure and move.” Sunrise has symbolically withheld endorsement but “plans to contact 1.5 million young Americans about voting for Harris.” Bill McKibben’s Third Act has also gone all in on Kamala. While these groups might mean well, they are going against their own interests and the interests of the working class and the human race as a whole when they support Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
The Climate Catastrophe
Climate catastrophe is not in the distant future, it is here. In the United States, “Heat-related deaths have steadily increased over the last few years from 1,563 in 2021, to 1,702 in 2022, and, provisionally, 2,297 deaths in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” It is even worse in Europe where more than 47,000 died from heat last year.
Floods in Nepal have resulted in over 200 deaths and displaced thousands more. Over 1 million acres have burned in forest fires this summer in California alone. Forest fires in the Amazon have been so severe that the rainforest is now a net producer of carbon, instead of a carbon sink. Megaron Txucarramãe, an Indigenous leader from the Amazon state of Mato Grosso said of the fires, “I’ve lived here since I was born and I’ve never seen the forest burn like this … The forest is burning. Animals are burning. Trees are burning. Everything’s burning.”
Hurricane Helene has resulted in over 190 deaths with hundreds still unaccounted for. The severity of the hurricane has been directly linked to climate change. “In the past, damage from hurricanes was primarily wind damage, but now we’re seeing so much more water damage and that is a result of the warm waters which is a result of climate change,” said Deane Criswell, FEMA administrator. These massive hurricanes are the new normal, not an exceptional event.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency “does not have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season.” FEMA has a budget of $29 billion dollars including almost $20 billion in Disaster Relief funds. In April, the US enacted a bill that included $26.38 billion for Israel’s genocide. Since 2022, Congress has approved $174.8 billion for Ukraine. This is in addition to a US military budget of $883.7 billion in 2024. Yet after the devestation of Helene, FEMA does not have the budget to make it through the hurricane season.
What Does Science Tell Us
Scientists have been making it absolutely clear for years that we must stop oil and gas expansion. A report released by the International Energy Agency in 2021 tells us “Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required.” What they are saying is that we can address climate change, but the path to do so means we must not develop new oil and gas wells.
And yet the US is still not listening to the scientists. Back in 2018, James Anderson, a Harvard scientist of atmospheric chemistry, was warning that we had to completely transform our economy in five years. It has been over five years and there has been no transformation.
People have the misapprehension that we can recover from this state just by reducing carbon emissions, Anderson said in an appearance at the University of Chicago. Recovery is all but impossible, he argued, without a World War II-style transformation of industry—an acceleration of the effort to halt carbon pollution and remove it from the atmosphere, and a new effort to reflect sunlight away from the earth's poles.
While his prediction that there would be no arctic sea ice by 2022 did not come true, we are still on the course for that eventuality. Antarctica is greening at a rapid pace as the ice melts.
Greening has also been reported in the Arctic, and in 2021 rain, not snow, fell on the summit of Greenland’s huge ice cap for the first time on record. - The Guardian
As early as 2011, scientists were saying that fracking was too environmentally damaging to continue.
Natural gas extracted from shale comes at too great a cost to the environment say Robert W. Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea.
In 2019, Brian Schwartz, professor of environmental health and engineering at John Hopkins University, speaking at a public health conference in Pennsylvania said that we should ban fracking.
What would I say now? I would say because of the regional and local health concerns and concerns about climate change, we should stop fracking–everywhere. - Brian Schwartz
But how does Kamala Harris feel about fracking? She is very clear that she will not ban fracking, as can be seen from this clip from the presidential debate.
And, in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking. - Kamala Harris, September 10
Banning fracking should be the floor when it comes to environmental policy, not something to be debated. Tim Walz did not mention fracking during the VP debate, but he did brag about how we are producing more oil and gas than ever before. Not only once, but twice.
We are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have. - VP candidate Tim Walz, answering a question on climate change
Under the Biden administration, the US has handed out more than 1,450 new oil and gas licences, accounting for half of the total globally, and 20% more licences than those issued by Donald Trump, who has promised to “drill, baby, drill” should he return to the White House. - The Guardian
I have cove
red the environmental disaster of the IRA previously. As Kamala said, it offered new leases for fracking and expanded oil and gas production. That’s not a climate bill; that’s a disaster.
The Build Back Worse Bill
Build Back Worse. It seems every liberal outlet is showering praise on the Infrastructure Reduction Bill. The Hill calls it a “sweeping health and climate bill.” The AFL-CIO says, “The Inflation Reduction Act Is a Victory for Working People.” And Time has said, “
The War Party
In addition to this disaster, Democrats have become the party of war. This was shown by Kamala Harris’ recent appearance with Liz Cheney, who has fully supported war through her career and voted with Trump 93% of the time. War is not just a political or economic issue, it is an environmental issue.
The US military is the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases in the US. In fact, it is one of the greatest polluters in the world. As Code Pink tells us, “The U.S. military is the world's largest institutional oil consumer. It causes more greenhouse gas emissions than 140 nations and accounts for about one-third of America's total fossil fuel consumption.” US militarism and imperialism is a major driver of climate change and Kamala Harris has called for the US military to be the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.
The two major conflicts supported by the Biden/Harris administration are the proxy war in Ukraine and the genocide in Palestine. Both of these conflicts have had major environmental impacts. A study of the Ukrainian war “found that a total of 120 million metric tons of planet-heating pollution can be attributed to the first 12 months of the war, according to the report published Wednesday. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of Belgium, or those produced by nearly 27 million gas-powered cars on the road for a year.” And that was just the first year.
In addition to the humanitarian cost, the genocide in Gaza has been an environmental disaster. A study of just the first two months of Israel’s aerial bombardment found that, “According to the study, which is based on only a handful of carbon-intensive activities and is therefore probably a significant underestimate, the climate cost of the first 60 days of Israel’s military response was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal.”
Carbon emissions from bombs dropped on Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force between October 2023 and February 2024 are equivalent to the carbon emitted by powering almost 10,000 homes for a year.
War and militarism are a critical challenge to achieving climate justice, but are still considered a niche concern in the wider universe of priorities for decarbonisation. By quantifying these emissions we hope that climate advocates can gain a better appreciation for the importance of contending with war, militarism and genocide. - Dr Patrick Bigger, research director at Climate and Community Project
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz fully support both of these military projects. Tim Walz went so far as to say, “But the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States to have the steady leadership there.” And Harris has “expressed her unwavering commitment to stand with Ukraine.” When it comes to the military and war, which is extremely detrimental to the environment, they spare no expense. But when it comes to actually addressing the climate catastrophe, there is no actual will to get anything done.
What Is To Be Done
Instead of supporting the Democrats, the party of fracking and war, climate activists should support communism. Communism is a materialist doctrine, so communists believe the science. Only a socialist planned economy will be able to combat the climate crisis. Reformism will only lead to barbarism. Supporting war mongers like Harris and Walz is not harm reduction when it comes to the environment. The imperialist Democratic party has fully embraced genocide and widescale climate destruction.
My friend, "support communism" is a step or bridge way too far for most; and furthermore, even for those who may support it ideologically, there is no clear path.
While I do think any of us concerned with the problems to which you point must put far more energy and capital into developing grassroots movement(s) instead of pretending that electoral politics will be sufficient, I wish more of us would give the concerned better election guidance than to merely point out how bad the establishment's duopoly is. As a realist, I realize that the odds aren't great that Jill Stein will win the Presidency. Yet it behooves us to give the needed support and encouragement to movements and Parties that share our values, interests and positions in opposition to imperialism and war and continuing climate destabilization, etc., and which have been trying to build a broader movement for some time. One may dislike that the Greens are not members of the Communist Party or SWP or the like, or are not attacking capitalism itself, but if we don't build broad socio-political movements all we are doing is barking at the moon.
Thanks for calling out the role of the military and war in environmental destruction. I took a dive into that topic earlier this year and you might appreciate it:
https://kollibri.substack.com/p/ecological-impacts-of-the-war-machine