It was 2016, and California’s coastline was about to get fracked.

President Barack Obama’s administration had just finalized plans to allow oil companies to resume offshore hydraulic fracturing and acidizing in the Santa Barbara Channel, determining the controversial practices posed “no significant impact” to the local environment or global climate.

Enter: Kamala Harris. Following the lead of state environmental groups, the then-California Attorney General sued the Obama administration in December 2016, seeking a halt to new offshore fracking permits.

The lawsuit called the decision to move forward on Pacific Coast fracking “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to the requirements of [the National Environmental Policy Act].” 

"We must take every possible step to protect our precious coastline and ocean," Harris said in a statement alongside the lawsuit.

The arguments in Harris’s lawsuit ultimately helped environmental groups convince a federal judge to pause all new Pacific offshore fracking. The injunction remains in place to this day, infuriating the likes of ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, who tried and failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn it.

Harris’s willingness to directly challenge Big Oil in 2016 set her apart from many mainstream Democrats at the time, who like Obama, considered fracking to be a “bridge” to a clean energy future. It’s clear now, as it was clear then, that expanding fracked methane production only further delays the transition to net zero energy sources.  

That willingness also speaks to why some climate activists are hopeful that, if nominated by the Democratic Party and eventually elected president, Vice President Harris might be willing to go further than President Joe Biden on tackling the climate crisis. (Biden, if you somehow missed it, dropped out of the presidential race this weekend.)

“Biden’s been willing to say yes to clean energy, but he’s been unwilling to say no to fossil fuels as much as we’d want him to,” said R.L. Miller, the president of California-based political action committee Climate Hawks Vote, citing Biden’s decisions to approve major fossil fuel projects like the Alaska Willow project and the Mountain Valley pipeline, among other things.

“Harris has shown more willingness to take the fight to Big Oil and prosecute bad guys,” Miller said. “I think she’s going to be willing to prosecute them for crimes against humanity.”

Miller’s hopefulness about Harris stems mostly from the vice president’s record as California Attorney General. As Politico recently reported, “Harris made a habit of suing fossil fuel companies …. amassing $50 million in settlements from lawsuits against Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66.” 

These lawsuits weren't over oil companies' respective roles in causing and covering up the climate crisis; they were over extensive alleged violations of anti-pollution laws. But Harris has also shown a willingness to target oil companies over climate denial and delay as well.

In 2016, her office opened up one of the first official law enforcement investigations into Exxon’s efforts to downplay the climate danger of their products. That investigation did not lead to a lawsuit; Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate less than a year later, and her successor Xavier Becerra chose not to continue it.

And in 2019, during the presidential campaign, Harris told Mother Jones that she would appoint members of her cabinet based in part on their commitment to tackling climate change—even at the prosecutorial level. “We’re going to put pressure on the big companies to do what is required and what is responsible,” she said.

But much time has passed since Harris’s first presidential campaign, as well as her prosecutorial career. After serving four years in the Biden White House, her outlook and vision for the presidency may be much different.

Fortunately, we still have 104 days to press her on what that vision looks like. Until then, here are some more blasts from the past.

Other signs Harris might be stronger than Biden on climate:

• She said she’d “get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.” Whereas President Biden has traditionally been opposed to ending the filibuster—the longstanding Senate rule requiring a 60-vote threshold to pass legislation—Harris said during the 2020 debate cycle that she would support its elimination in order to pass comprehensive climate legislation. (CNN)
  

• She said she’d ban many oil and gas projects. During CNN’s climate town hall, Harris said she would end fracking and offshore drilling if she was elected—going a step further than Biden, who said he wouldn’t ban fracking and issued both onshore and offshore oil and gas permits. (Politico)
  

• She supports a carbon tax on polluters. The U.S. has never put a price on carbon, but in 2019, Harris pledged to tax polluting industries and give the majority of the funds to environmental justice communities. In comparison, the Biden administration only recently created a task force to consider whether the U.S. should put a carbon tax on imported goods. (The New York Times)
  

• She pitched a climate budget 10 times bigger than anything so far. On the 2020 campaign trail, Harris proposed a $10 trillion climate plan—an exponential increase over Biden’s historic $1.6 trillion climate legislation. (Politico)
  

• She also said she’d stop subsidizing fossil fuels. In the same climate plan, she promised that the government would end billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies— something Biden has tried, and failed, to do during his presidency. (CNN) 
  

On the other hand…

• Talk is cheap. Campaign promises are a far cry from presidential action.

• She didn’t take a “leading role” on climate in the Senate. As Justin Worland reported in 2020, Harris’s committee assignments in the Senate — Judiciary, Budget, Intelligence and Homeland Security — “didn’t lend themselves to a leading role on climate change. But she did earn a 91% pro-environmental voting record from the League of Conservation Voters.” (Time)
  

• She initially declined to attend CNN’s infamous 7-hour climate “town hall” in 2019. The then-presidential candidate initially said she had a scheduling conflict, which disappeared after the move sparked backlash from environmental groups like the Sunrise Movement. (The Hill)
  

• She claimed to have “sued” Exxon over climate change. She didn’t. During that town hall, Harris falsely claimed that she had sued ExxonMobil, when her office had only opened an investigation into the oil giant’s decades of climate disinformation. (The New York Times)
  

• She reportedly refused to sue PG&E when she was California’s Attorney General. Harris’s office didn’t respond to requests from local lawmakers to charge California’s largest utility with illegal cooperation with regulators, after the company was caught wining and dining officials from the state’s Public Utility Commission. (The New York Times)
  

• She claimed she helped environmental justice communities as district attorney, but only sued small-time polluters. As the San Francisco district attorney, Harris’s environmental justice unit sued small businesses, including a community newspaper accused of dumping ink, and a local auto body shop performing illegal smog checks, instead of powerful corporate interests. (Real Clear Investigations)

And meanwhile, on the other side of the universe… 

On Thursday, former President Donald Trump took the stage at the Republican National Convention to deliver the longest presidential nomination acceptance speech in U.S. history. During his 90-minute speech, Trump never said the words “climate,” “environment,” or “pollution.” But he did say these things:

• “Drill, baby, drill.” One of Trump’s favorite campaign slogans (originally coined by former RNC chair Michael Steele) is back in full force, with the former president promising to expand oil and gas drilling and flood the country with “liquid gold”—even though Biden has expanded oil and gas production more than Trump ever did.
  

• No more “green scams.” Trump promised to take the “trillions of dollars” Biden spent on “the green new scam” and spend them on infrastructure projects instead—a move he claimed would solve inflation.

• No more Teslas. Trump also promised to “end the electric vehicle mandate on day one” to “save the auto industry from obliteration.” (Note: there is no such thing as an electric vehicle mandate; Trump is talking about the EPA’s new pollution standards for cars). While Trump has consistently railed against EVs at rallies, he may not follow through on this threat; Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly pledged to donate an unprecedented $45 million every month to a pro-Trump Super PAC. But Musk has also said that he’s fine if Trump disincentivizes electric vehicles.

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