“We know that protecting our planet for ourselves and future generations requires the kind of bold leadership that Kamala Harris has demonstrated her whole life,” they wrote. “We are proud to support her and be in the fight against climate change with her.”
Inslee, whose ambitious climate proposals during his 2020 presidential campaign influenced Biden’s climate policies, said Harris could help mobilize young voters, a crucial Democratic constituency. Polls show that climate change is a top concern for young people, who are more likely than older generations to face raging wildfires, rising seas and stronger storms in their lifetimes.
“Her candidacy instantly lit an electric spark under young people across the country,” Inslee said. “That’s going to bode well for our fortunes.”
Without directly criticizing Biden, Inslee added: “Now politics is fun again because people have hope and a dynamic leader.”
Saad Amer, a 29-year-old climate activist, U.N. consultant and founder of the consultancy Justice Environment, said Harris “offers so much energy and excitement and potential, which I think young people are hungry for.”
Amer noted that as California attorney general, Harris sued the Obama administration over its approval of permits for fracking off the Pacific coast. “I mean, that’s so iconic,” he said.
Kerry, who left the Biden administration in March, said in an interview that Harris was a “terrific ally” on climate policy. He noted that she was an early advocate of the United States reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century, and she delivered a forceful speech at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai last fall.
Kerry said that, other than Donald Trump, no world leader “has pulled out of the Paris [climate] agreement or spread dangerous disinformation about wind turbines causing cancer.”
“I think the case is crystal clear that Kamala Harris is the exact opposite: a committed, sensible, down-to-earth, practical leader,” he added.
Other signatories of the letter include former White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, famed climate activist Bill McKibben, billionaire clean-energy investor Tom Steyer and environmental justice advocate Catherine Coleman Flowers. Many of the signatories had previously endorsed Biden before he ended his reelection campaign.
Flowers said Harris, who created one of the country’s first environmental justice units as district attorney in San Francisco, has focused on helping disadvantaged communities that are disproportionately burdened by pollution. As president, she said, Harris could take Biden’s environmental justice efforts “even further than where they are right now.”
Harris and Trump have taken sharply divergent approaches to climate policy and the fossil fuel industry. Harris has described global warming as an “existential threat to us as a species,” and she prosecuted Big Oil companies over hazardous waste while serving as California attorney general. Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and during an April meeting at his Mar-a-Lago Club, he asked oil executives to steer $1 billion toward his campaign while promising to reverse dozens of environmental rules, as first reported by The Post.
“Y’all saw that a couple months ago at Mar-a-Lago, he literally promised Big Oil companies, Big Oil lobbyists, he would do their bidding for $1 billion in campaign donations,” Harris said at a rally in Milwaukee last week. “On the other hand, we are running a people-powered campaign.”
Trump and his allies, for their part, have attacked Harris’s past support for banning fracking during her previous presidential bid. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, wrote on social media last week that Harris’s policies would “crush” Pennsylvania, a swing state and the country’s second-largest producer of natural gas. (An official with the Harris campaign clarified Friday that she would not seek to ban fracking if elected president.)
Even before announcing her 2024 campaign, Harris had sought to engage climate leaders and activists. She invited dozens of environmentalists to an Earth Day-themed event in April 2023 at the official vice president’s residence, the U.S. Naval Observatory, where Ellie Goulding performed, according to two attendees. Goulding is an English singer-songwriter and an ambassador for the U.N. Environment Program.
Now that Harris has replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, environmentalists have contributed to a flood of campaign contributions. A virtual fundraiser for Harris last week hosted by environmental advocates raised roughly $100,000 from small-dollar donors. Overall, the Harris campaign said Sunday that it had raked in $200 million in the week since Biden exited the campaign, with two-thirds of the haul coming from first-time donors.
“The enthusiasm is off the charts,” said Leah Stokes, a climate policy expert at the University of California at Santa Barbara who co-hosted the fundraiser last week in her personal capacity.
“President Biden has delivered on climate like nobody else in this country in history,” she added. “But now it’s just a whole new race, and the energy is crazy.”
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