When US voters head to the polls on Tuesday 5 November, climate change will not be the deciding issue. This is a race that has been characterised by JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies”, the abdication of an ailing Joe Biden, and Donald Trump’s survival of an attempt on his life. It has also been a campaign in which litigious questions around abortion rights, immigration and foreign policy continue to antagonise actors from across the political spectrum. It is difficult, then, to properly assess what the outcome of 5 November could mean for the US record on climate.
Climate change has failed to endure as an issue among US voters, despite its salience during the 2020 campaign when political conditions were very different. Towards the end of 2019, Greta Thunberg and her Skolstrejk för Klimatet, or Fridays for Future, caught the world’s attention, spawning similar protests from students globally and placing climate firmly on the international political agenda. According to polling ahead of the 2020 election by Pew Research Centre, 42 per cent of US voters claimed climate change would be very important in deciding who to vote for.
Yet this November’s result will alter the future of global temperatures. The US remains the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases: in 2022, 5.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide were released, around 13.5 per cent of the global total. And as a country with clear economic and diplomatic clout, the US’s progress towards decarbonisation or regression to fossil fuels has an influence on the emissions reduction of other nations.
So where do the two candidates stand on climate change? And what could their presidencies mean for the green transition?
Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, and the Democratic nominee, has form on factoring the climate into decision-making while in office. She was the deciding vote on Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and helped to sign it into US law in 2021. (The Inflation Reduction Act is unequivocally one of the stronger aspects of Biden’s legacy but is likely to be overshadowed by the clumsy demise of his presidency after a series of very public blunders.) Through the act, the American state made major investments in renewable energy as part of the Biden administration’s aim to reduce the US’s greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade. It’s likely that a Harris victory would give the Democrats an opportunity to solidify this policy.
However, besides signing off on a flagship green policy – for which Biden must be given the most credit – Harris’s recent record on the climate is hazy. She formerly backed the Green New Deal – a movement that calls for the creation of a Roosevelt-style operation to embed action on climate change into public policy – but her focus on this has cooled since receiving the Democratic nomination. Perhaps her biggest U-turn, however, has been on fracking. Once a vociferous opponent of this method of fossil fuel extraction, Harris is now in favour. US pundits have pointed out that this volte-face is likely aimed at winning over marginal voters in Pennsylvania.
As Harris was parachuted into the candidacy after Biden’s withdrawal from the race, she has not been subject to the same political scrutiny as she would have been in a typical race for the Democratic presidential nomination. This makes it difficult to discern her exact position on issues outside of those informing the electoral narrative. With two weeks to go, we likely won’t get a proper read on the climate stance of a Harris presidency unless she is elected.
Donald Trump
On Donald Trump’s position on the climate crisis, however, there is no equivocation. The former president clearly does not believe this disaster is real. During his 2017-21 administration, Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (which it re-entered under Biden) and rolled back several of the US’s environmental protections. His approach to the extraction of fossil fuels was explicit: “drill, baby, drill”. A second Trump presidency will likely bring a similarly insouciant approach to the reduction of US carbon emissions.
Indeed, it seems as though Trump’s climate denialism has been ramped up in his quest for a second term in office. During the 2024 campaign, the former president described the climate crisis as “one of the great scams” and said the threat of “nuclear warming”, not global warming, would be “the warming that you’re going to have to be very careful with”. (It should be noted that nuclear power plants produce almost no carbon emissions).
So what next?
There is a more positive outlook emanating from the Harris campaign on climate issues than there is from Team Trump. His administration would likely be disastrous for limiting the rise of global temperatures; a Harris victory would prove more encouraging. But an empty victory, for the Democrat’s election does not guarantee the US will be in the clear on the climate. If she is elected on 5 November, Harris will have a thankless task ahead of her in reducing America’s contribution to this spiralling global crisis.
This article was originally published as an edition of the Green Transition, New Statesman Spotlight’s weekly newsletter on the economics of net zero. To see more editions and subscribe, click here.
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