Kamala Harris focuses on inclusion and justice in A Climate Plan For the People: Communities most affected by environmental harm, Indigenous Americans, farming and ranching families, and scientists. The powerful interests she will hold to account: Polluters, oil companies, global agribusiness, and climate deniers peddling “science fiction.”
She centers the marginalized, those who have experienced systemic socioeconomic disparities, environmental racism, and other forms of injustice—and ensures those “frontline communities” will have a seat at the table. She emphasizes the jobs and social benefits of action, while laying out the adaptations and changes that need to be made. She uses her own creative intellect to weave it all together into a comprehensive, targeted strategy for climate action. “This isn’t just a fight against something; it’s a fight for something.”
Kamala’s own brief:
- Invest $10 trillion to achieve a clean economy by 2045 and create millions of jobs;
- Pursue justice for communities across America shattered by climate change;
- Protect our natural resources by stopping drilling on public lands and investing in renewable energy;
- Hold corporations accountable that pollute our air, land, and water;
- And reassert the United States’ global leadership on climate by rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.
Our Democratic candidates are broadly aligned on timelines and targets. (Kamala Harris’ team consulted with Jay Inslee’s team for feedback.) All are going to have to negotiate an obstacle course. Kamala Harris has laid out a pragmatic, multifaceted, flexible plan, with a deeply thought out strategy for getting started immediately and keeping the momentum going.
Her plan runs 44 pages dense with goals and details. (I attempted to condense it to a table of contents and ended up with 8 pages...nevermind.) Feel free to skip over this ungodly mess; I sliced and diced a few different ways, and still couldn’t shoehorn everything in.
Bottom-line targets:
- 50% emissions reduction by 2030
- 100% carbon-neutral electricity by 2030, using a Clean Electricity Standard
- All new buildings carbon-neutral by 2030, using a Clean Building Standard
- 100% of all new buses, including school buses, zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2030
- 100% of all new vehicle purchases for corporate fleets, transportation networks, and heavy duty vehicles ZEVs by 2030
- 50% of all new passenger vehicles zero-emission by 2030, 100% zero-emission by 2035
- Protect 30% of US lands and oceans by 2030 (using existing authorities like the Antiquities Act), and work with international partners to realize that goal at the global scale
- Transform our public lands from net carbon emitters to net carbon sinks by 2030
- Fully implement science-based agricultural conservation and carbon-sequestration practices by 2040
- 100% carbon-neutral economy by 2045
- $10 trillion of public and private spending over the next 10 years ($3.3 trillion as federal spending, according to the Harris campaign. This is a realistic two-to-one leverage ratio).
- $250 billion over the next five years in drinking water infrastructure
Some immediate and near-term actions:
- Declare a Drinking Water Infrastructure Emergency on Day One
- Rejoin the Paris Agreement
- Use Executive authority to restore environmental and public health protections, and to implement other climate and equity goals
- Create a new office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability
- Close loopholes for polluters, like the fracking-protecting Halliburton Loophole
- Ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol and the Convention on Biological Diversity
- Honor, and double, U.S. finance commitments to the Green Climate Fund
- Establish a climate envoy in every major embassy
- Assess grid vulnerabilities from Cyber and climate threats within one year.
- Convene a meeting of major emitters in early 2021 on climate change and fossil-fuel phase out.
- Invest in R&D for shipping, aviation, and rail, including high-speed rail, and develop specific emissions reduction goals for each sector within two years.
Kamala Harris builds on her strong record against oil companies and fracking. As SF DA, she created an environmental justice unit. As CA AG, she immediately stepped up environmental enforcement and sued to block oil fracking. She ensured justice after the 2011 Cosco Busan Oil Spill that impacted more than 100 miles of California coastline. She got $24.5 million from Chevron for hazardous materials violations. She sued Plains All-American Pipeline for their oil spill off California, resulting in indictment on dozens of criminal charges. In 2016, she was one of the first AGs to investigate the deception around known climate risks by Exxon Mobil. She joined the legal battle to defend President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. As Senator, Kamala Harris urged accountability for major oil companies’ multi-million dollar campaign of doubt, deception and obstruction, joining a brief supporting a climate damages lawsuit against Big Oil.
Kamala identifies what she will restore, and expand: Executive Order 12898. Over 80 environmental rules. The Social Cost of Carbon Taskforce. Robustly fund the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, assist states working to hold polluters accountable. Direct the Environmental and Natural Resources Division at the U.S. Department of Justice to address both cumulative and legacy pollution. Restore “polluter pays” for funding the Superfund program.
Kamala builds off of her own legislation, including: Her Climate Equity Act requires equity scores for legislation. Requires frontline community impact review for Executive branch rules, regulations, federal grant-making and investment programs. Also creates a new office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability to represent the views of frontline communities.
She’ll use executive authority to implement principles of her legislation as she works to pass it through Congress.
Her Water Justice Act makes both urban and rural water safe, affordable, and sustainable. Includes repair/replace for drinking water infrastructure, well water, and septic systems. Creates a low-income assistance program for water and sewer bills.
Her 21st Century SKILLS Act provides up to $8,000 per worker for training, education, and supportive services.
Her Living Shorelines Act funds climate-resilient living shoreline projects to protect coastal communities by supporting ecosystem functions and habitats with the use of natural materials and systems.
Kamala adopts the best ideas of others, with full credit, including: Senator Booker’s Environmental Justice Act requires Federal agencies to address environmental justice.
Senator Warren’s Climate Risk Disclosure Act requires that public companies properly disclose their climate risk.
Senator Markey’s National Climate Bank Act mobilizes private investment through a green bank.
Kamala’s climate plan uses all three branches of government. She will get it done, but she knows we need to keep our House majority and flip the Senate. Kamala Harris has signed Run for Something’s down-ballot pledge, and she is the number-one fundraiser for her fellow Democrats. She was helping out in other races before she even won her Senate seat.
The five pillars:
A Foundation for Justice: Ensure everyone benefits and participates through an environmental justice focus. Impacted communities aren’t problems to be solved, but rather central participants in decision-making, and primary beneficiaries of investment.
Increase penalties for polluting companies, and shift burden of proof to manufacturers to prove safety of potential toxins. Fully fund agencies, rely on unbiased science.
Statutorily reinforce standing to protect access to the courts for those harmed by pollution, to seek restitution for environmental and climate-related damages; also, strengthen access to counsel. (This follows a path blazed by tobacco litigation, and the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights championed by Harris in California.)
Holding Polluters Accountable: Leverage both executive authority and Congress to end fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks, oppose new fossil fuel infrastructure projects, and protect public lands. Investigate and prosecute bad actors for both cumulative and legacy pollution.
The fossil fuel industry must be held to account for knowingly damaging our environment and endangering public health; also chemical companies and other polluting industries. Make polluters pay by placing a progressively increasing carbon fee as far upstream as possible.
Building a Clean Economy That Works For the People: Immediately implement well-understood and efficient policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in sectors like electricity and ground transportation. Simultaneously, work on solutions to sectors like aviation, shipping; also the creation of products like cement, steel, and plastics.
Progressive year-on-year benchmarks, including for energy, transportation, infrastructure, industry, and agriculture. Funding for transmission infrastructure. Funding and R&D for grid-scale and distributed energy storage.
Protecting Our Natural Resources: End fossil fuel exploitation of public lands and waters. Protect against wildfires with a healthy forest and ecosystem using science-based forest management. Healthy forests store carbon and provide clean air and water. Expand wind and solar, diversify ecosystems, preserve biodiversity. Access to nature matters.
Asserting International Leadership: We are the largest carbon polluter in history, and have benefited most from fossil fuels—we must take responsibility and lead the global fight for environment and clean energy, decarbonizing aviation and addressing maritime emissions. Diplomatic efforts to save the world’s forests, including the Amazon rainforest. Welcome climate refugees.
More—paraphrased from Kamala’s plan (my own notes italicized in parentheses):
A Foundation for Justice: She explicitly addresses the inequities created by air pollution: Black, Latino, and Asian families are exposed to 21 to 43 percent more air pollution than White families. She will implement policies to decrease emissions.
She will address the systemic exploitation of Indigenous communities and disrespect of tribal sovereignty, and ensure Indigenous people are included in decision-making, that their knowledge is utilized, and consent given for projects that may affect them or their territory. She notes this is also what the IPCC recommends.
Holding Polluters Accountable: Big Oil has known the detrimental impacts of burning fossil fuels for over 40 years—time spent relentlessly fighting government action on climate change with denial, delay, and deception, including millions of dollars on obfuscating phony studies. The fossil fuel industry will be held accountable. Ditto for other polluting industries.
Building a Clean Economy That Works For the People: She plans expansion of rural electric cooperatives and leveraging the Rural Utilities Service at USDA to take over unprofitable dirty energy assets. (This extends Inslee’s plan (page 9), which offers debt relief for rural co-ops’ stranded assets. Note: Rural electric co-ops opposed Waxman-Markey because of their coal assets.)
Expand conservation tillage, cover crops, managed grazing, crop rotation, and partnering with renewable energy. (A lot of attention to agricultural strategies here.)
Retrofit existing buildings, particularly in low-income and underserved areas. Address the affordable housing crisis combining transportation and climate-smart infrastructure to increase urban density and livability. (Some studies have estimated that carbon emissions could be reduced by 30% through urban densification.)
Green communities: build with natural infrastructure to combat sea level rise and save energy, protect groundwater, reduce erosion, and buffer storms and flooding. Implement strategies like green roofs, green streets, riparian buffers, and planting trees.
Progressively expand the electric vehicle tax credit and shift it to a point-of-sale rebate so low- and middle-income families can benefit. Also, major investment in charging infrastructure. (The point-of-sale rebate is classic Kamala; low- and middle-income folks can’t afford to wait for a tax refund.)
Reduce car usage and expand public transit, including addressing gaps in first mile, last mile service. (Angie Schmitt at Streetsblog notes Kamala Harris is the only candidate “explicitly pointing out that we need to reduce car use.” The IPCC estimates we need to drive 20% less [PDF, page 65] to avoid the worst effects of climate change.)
A goal of zero food waste by increasing food utilization, reducing packaging, and commercial composting/biofuels. (Food waste has a huge carbon footprint—FAO.) Shift from plastic to recyclable and degradable packing, invest in recycling and composting. A 75% reduction in waste creates over one million jobs.
Protecting Our Natural Resources: Work with underrepresented communities to identify, protect, and appropriately honor sacred sites and places of historic and cultural significance to ensure that our national parks and monuments honor and tell the stories of all Americans. (Representation matters.)
Make entry to all of our public lands free, including our National Parks. Create a new Office of Outdoor Recreation to coordinate outdoor opportunities, increase diversity, and ensure access for all with strategies like transit to trails. Kamala’s Outdoors for All Act provides green spaces and low-carbon recreation for the nearly 100 million Americans who don’t have access to a park within a 10-minute walk.
Asserting International Leadership: Shift from being an exporter of fossil fuels to an exporter of clean energy technology. Direct U.S. Export-Import Bank and OPIC to stop investing in fossil fuel projects. Urge the World Bank to do the same. Work with other world leaders to stop fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Improve global greenhouse gas data collection to enhance transparency and accountability.
Work with our allies to stem and address climate migration and welcome climate refugees. Ensure they are given appropriate protections under international law. Direct executive agencies, such as USAID, to internationally support climate resiliency, improve disaster preparedness, and restore the health of environmental systems in order to address climate migration.
At the CNN Climate Crisis Town Hall, Kamala Harris said she would direct the Department of Justice to take oil and gas companies “to court and sue them.” She said “people who profit off harmful behaviors” change when the financial incentives change. “It’s not a question of debating the science. It’s a question of taking on powerful interests, taking on the polluters, understanding that they have a profit motive to pollute.” She would eliminate the filibuster if necessary to pass a Green New Deal. "Lead, follow, or get out the way." She also called for a ban on fracking and offshore drilling. (video here).
One last note, out of tune with most people on this site: Kamala was asked whether she would agree to modify dietary guidelines in light of the latest IPCC report, which warns that drastic changes in human diets are needed, and recommends a reduction in meat consumption. Kamala gave a perfect answer. She admitted change is hard, but agreed it is necessary. “The balance we have to strike is about what the government can and should do around creating incentives, and then banning certain behaviors." She agreed dietary guidelines should be changed, said government should “encourage moderation,” and proposed a health and environmental impact label on foods (carbon footprint labels have been shown to be effective in changing consumer behavior). This is a critically important issue (read the IPCC chapter on food security).
Kamala2020 info and links are below!
Newpioneer has rounded up some highlights of her sponsored legislation here.
snowman3 has rounded up some more legislative highlights here.
Gay CA Democrat lists 21 bills or proposals here.
Want to know more about her positions and plans? Her policy page is Our America.
Or go straight to an issue: quality, affordable health care for all, economic justice, raising teacher pay, combating the climate crisis, criminal justice reform, action on gun violence, a fair and just immigration system, LGBTQ+ equality, government for the people, debt-free college and student debt, gender equality, American leadership at home and abroad, and fighting for racial justice.
More plans: The Reproductive Rights Act, Equal Pay, Roadmap to Citizenship for Dreamers, Combating the Racial Homeownership Gap, Reducing the Opportunity Gap, Fair Prescription Drug Prices, Kamala’s 3AM Agenda, Combating Violent Hate, A Climate Plan For the People, Transform the Criminal Justice System and Re-Envision Public Safety.
Upcoming events:
September 12--tonight: The third Democratic presidential primary debate will be held in Houston, TX, at Texas Southern, from 8 to 11 p.m. ET on ABC, Univision, and ABC News Live. It will also stream on Hulu Live, The Roku Channel, Facebook Watch, AppleTV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube, Apple News, and Twitter. Moderators: George Stephanopoulos, David Muir, Linsey Davis, and Jorge Ramos.
Please remember to visit our community group page Kamala2020 and give us a follow! That way all our group efforts will appear in your stream; this makes it easy for everyone to keep up with our latest posts. As always, any who would like to join our group please leave us a comment and we’ll get your invitation right out to you!
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Upcoming schedule:
Saturday — September 14th —
Monday — September 16th —
Thursday—September 19th—
Saturday—September 21st--
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Group Guidelines
The Kamala2020 community group has been created to positively support Senator Kamala Harris, and not to engage in negativity towards other Democrats running in the 2020 primaries.
All should be made to feel welcomed here. What’s not welcomed here is petty bickering over any of our preferred candidates, or personal attacks on fellow Democrats. We’re not responsible for the actions of others who may offend, insult or attempt to sow discord and disunity — that’s on them.
What we are responsible for are our own words and actions — that’s 100% on us.
I’d like to ask all group members, as well as those dropping by who support or are interested in Kamala’s bid for the nomination, that we not respond to negativity from other campaign’s supporters with even more negativity. Let’s do better than our best and respond with respect, humor or try to hold our peace. Recipes and cat pics work, too 😃
Doing no harm costs us nothing... pie-fights will cost us everything.
Hindi, not Tamil, but Filmed at Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska!
Madhuri Dixit & Anil Kapoor, from the 2000 film Pukar (Music: A.R. Rahman Director: Rajkumar Santoshi Playback Singers: Sonu Nigam & Anuradha Paudwal)
I favor blow-out dance numbers, but this has great vocals and cinematography, and the location can’t be beat. Said to be the only time sunny-natured Madhuri Dixit (nickname: Bubbles) ever lost her temper on the job: The director of this beautiful picturization ordered a helicopter to hover over her, to artistically blow her chiffon sari. Dixit started screaming up at it, startling everyone wearing warm clothes.