When it comes to climate matters, Vice President Kamala Harris has been playing a centrist on the campaign trail. However, while her campaign is now feigning support for fossil fuels, its recent hiring of Camila Thorndike as climate engagement director revealed Harris’s plans for climate policy are anything but reasonable.
Thorndike, a former staffer for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), fuels the narrative that climate anxiety is a legitimate reason to avoid having children and highlights a growing push among progressive activists to pit humans and the environment against one another. As she tries to reconcile Harris’s progressive climate policy with her campaign trail compromises, Thorndike has become proof that the campaign’s climate progressivism and climate realism can’t both be true.
Harris has been trying to distance herself from Green New Deal-style climate activism, at least for campaigning purposes. After recognizing how her calls for banning fracking would hurt her electoral chances in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, she’s changed her policy positions, even publicly promoting oil drilling during the recent presidential debate to prove her newfound commitment to fossil fuels.
Thorndike has a difficult job trying to answer for the Harris campaign’s changing climate stances. Last week, Thorndike said, on behalf of the campaign, a Harris administration wouldn’t support the expansion of fossil fuel drilling, leaving some confused as to why the campaign has been singing the praises of the current administration’s domestic oil production. This week, though, she walked back the statement, noting Harris cast the tiebreaking vote that, among other things, opened new fracking leases. The whiplash appears to be the result of opportunistic pandering to swing voters while trying to maintain a progressive climate narrative, and it’s been far from clear how exactly those ends meet.
If Thorndike appears confused, it’s evidence of an inconsistent campaign, not her own disorientation. She was hired as a firm progressive. While Harris is suggesting she plans to govern in a balanced way on climate and energy, acknowledging the promise of carbon capture for fossil fuels and that exporting American liquefied natural gas displaces coal use and lowers global carbon emissions, hiring Thorndike, a far-left climate activist who spoke with the Washington Post about her anti-natalism, suggests the opposite is true.
While someone uninformed about policy could be forgiven for this kind of rhetoric, Thorndike should know better than to fan the flames of climate alarmism, anti-natalism, and degrowth. If anything, the United States suffers from birth rates that are too low, not from overpopulation. These talking points appear, though, to be right in line with the Harris campaign’s long-term plans, even if they make Thorndike’s job difficult on the campaign trail. If Harris had wanted a centrist, she would have hired one.
The progressive refusal to reconcile the future of humanity with the planet’s future shows how little creativity Democrats bring to the table. By insisting on a climate agenda that demonizes energy resources while offering no vision for alternative energy development, Democratic policy wonks, such as Thorndike, have painted their candidate into a corner.
Meanwhile, Republicans have led the way in reducing emissions without stoking climate anxiety and anti-natalism. While Harris is flipping on fracking for political reasons, Republicans have long understood that fracking has helped revitalize American industry and reduce emissions more than the rest of the developed world combined.
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The political Left pretends that Republicans have no climate solutions, but the reality is they have solutions that fuel prosperity through energy abundance. That approach is much better for our economy and families than endless regulations and subsidies.
Harris may talk the talk on the campaign trail, but her staffing tells a very different story. Her campaign has so far failed to offer a coherent or consistent vision, instead deciding to pit people against the planet. That’s a false dilemma where everyone loses.
Alina Clough is a fellow with ConservAmerica.