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What a Harris-led USA would mean for Canada and the climate

U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris speaks at the United Nations climate change summit in Dubai on Dec. 2 2024. Photo via UNFCCC/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously compared Canada-U.S. relations to sleeping next to an elephant. “No matter how friendly and even tempered… one is affected by every twitch and grunt,” he said 55 years ago — before climate change was a broadly accepted and accelerating phenomenon. Today, that same elephant holds the biggest levers to slow global catastrophe, and the twitches and grunts are the least of our worries.

As the American election creeps closer with two radically different visions for the country, backed by fiercely polarized political factions, the U.S. appears poised for another tense election cycle. From a climate perspective, a second Donald Trump presidency would be a “disaster,” says University of Victoria associate professor James Rowe. “It’s drill baby, drill.”

If Vice-President Kamala Harris is able to secure the Democratic nomination, as appears likely, and she is able to defeat Trump in the election, it’s expected she would continue Biden-era climate policies. While there’s room for improvement, Rowe says it’s “far better” than the Trump alternative.

“Climate is about physics — it doesn't care about politics — but we do live in a world where we have to relate to political dynamics,” Rowe said. “Every degree matters, so having parties in power that at least believe in climate change and are taking genuine steps to address it, even if those steps are not enough… is better.”

Keeping up with the Americans

Since 2015, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose to power, much of his tenure has been reacting to the United States’s political whiplash. For many observers, what the U.S. does on climate either shrinks or expands the realm of possibilities for Canadian policymakers. For instance, the workhorse of Canada’s plan to slash emissions are a series of tax credits unveiled in Budget 2023 that were a direct response to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act.

If Harris is able to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president and wins the general election, Canada should expect additions to the Inflation Reduction Act as part of a continuation of the plan Biden put forward.

If Harris beats Trump, she would be the fourth U.S. president Trudeau works with.

First, Trudeau collaborated for about a year with former President Barack Obama. The ink on the Paris Agreement was still drying when the two countries issued a joint statement outlining how Canada and the United States would coordinate climate action.

Cooperating on climate was short-lived. Once former President Donald Trump took the Oval Office, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, and according to The New York Times, rolled back more than 100 separate environmental rules, unleashing significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Most recently, President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is arguably the most significant piece of climate legislation in the world, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the energy transition. Trudeau was forced to respond with the 2023 federal budget introducing billions of dollars of clean energy tax credits designed to compete in the automotive, energy and mining sectors, among others.

Harris vs Trump

If Harris is able to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president and wins the general election, Canada should expect additions to the Inflation Reduction Act as part of a continuation of the plan Biden put forward. If Trump wins a second term, it is expected the Inflation Reduction Act would be gutted and the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Agreement again.

“The U.S. election will be one of the most consequential moments determining the world's ability to limit warming to 1.5 degrees,” Caroline Broutillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, told Canada’s National Observer, calling the choice “clear.”

“Trump’s Project 2025 would tear down the regulatory and investment progress made in past years,” she said — whereas Harris “has been one of the key architects and promoters of the Inflation Reduction Act.”

Project 2025 is nothing short of a plan to dismantle the administrative and regulatory powers of the federal government. In roughly 900 pages written by right wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, the proposal outlines how a Republican-led federal government could shift federal institutions to the right by reclassifying bureaucrats as political appointees to strip them of job protections and ensure party loyalty.

Trump has attempted to distance himself from the plan, but key chapters were written by influential, Trump-affiliated officials like Russell Vought, who currently serves as the Republican National Committee’s policy director.

[U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris speaks at the United Nations climate change summit in Dubai on Dec. 2 2024. Photo via UNFCCC/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)]

Harris, by contrast, has consistently and publicly supported climate action.

“Vice President Harris has been integral to the Biden administration’s most important climate accomplishments and has a long track record as an impactful climate champion,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of climate group Evergreen Action, in a statement.

“From establishing one of the first environmental justice units in the country when she was the district attorney of San Francisco, to taking on Big Oil in the courts as California Attorney General… Vice President Harris has fought to hold polluters accountable and deliver for the hardest-hit communities her entire career.”

In a Substack post on Monday, prominent American environmental advocate Bill McKibben threw his support behind Harris, saying this election would be crucial to the planet’s future.

“We measure our physical life in trips around the sun, and we measure our national life in four-year blocks,” he wrote. “The current one expires in 106 days, and the one after that will take us to the end of the decade.

“I don’t think it’s hyperbole… to say that this next term will be decisive, our last chance to operate with anything like a free hand in the fight to cut those emissions.”

Harris’ climate credentials

When Harris first ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2019, she crafted an ambitious climate plan that proposed US$10 trillion in spending to reach net-zero by 2045, promised to hold big polluters financially accountable for their environmental harms, and pledged to protect 30 per cent of the country’s land and water (a target later enshrined in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework countries, including Canada, and agreed to in 2022).

Perhaps, the most significant proposal in her 2019 platform was to convene a meeting of major emitters, to build an international alliance aimed at managing the phase-out of fossil fuel production.

That is a remarkably similar idea to some of the most ambitious climate initiatives discussed in international climate change negotiations, like the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative developed by prominent Canadian climate advocate Tzeporah Berman, or the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, of which Quebec is a leader.

McKibben called Harris “pretty darned good” on climate, but conceded her climate plan arrived at a time that was “pretty near peak-Greta,” with Fridays for the Future major school strikes occurring only a couple months before.

“So don’t look for her to be stressing all these positions in the next three months,” McKibben wrote.

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