The years Vice President Kamala Harris spent supporting the Green New Deal and calling for an end to fossil fuel use were always going to be a tough sell in natural-gas rich Pennsylvania.
Did adding Gov. Tim Walz to the Democratic ticket just make her problem worse?
“Governor Walz is even more fanatical than Vice President Harris in warring against the domestic energy sources that sustain our civilization,” Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association President and CEO David N. Taylor told DVJournal.
And even the left-leaning Washington Post appears to agree.
“The liberal bent of the Democratic ticket was solidified when Harris picked as her running mate Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a climate hawk who last year signed a law mandating that his state’s electricity grid run entirely on green energy by 2040,” the Post reported Tuesday.
Walz’s anti-fossil-fuel resume is at least as strong as Harris’s.
The law he signed mandating electricity providers to be 100 percent carbon-free by 2040 will cost the Gopher State more than $300 billion, critics say, or $3,888 per year through 2050 for every ratepayer.
Walz signed onto California’s vehicle emissions standards to require Minnesota to increase the share of electric cars to 20 percent by 2030. Under those rules, one in five vehicles on the road would have to be electric.
And Walz’s first budget as governor called for a 70 percent increase in the gas tax, which would have pushed Minnesota to fourth-highest in the nation.
These policies may not be popular in Pennsylvania, but they closely align with Harris’s record as a U.S. senator and vice president.
The California Democrat infamously vowed to ban fracking in 2019 (an unidentified campaign official says Harris has recently reversed her position), and she was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. Harris also supported a bill that would ban vehicles with internal combustion engines.
Harris has pledged to direct the Department of Justice to pursue fossil fuel polluters. “Let’s make sure there are severe and serious penalties for their behaviors,” she told Mother Jones. She vowed to increase environmental spending by $10 trillion.
Harris urged a United Nations global climate summit last year to urgently fight climate change. “The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for last time.”
And Harris was a vocal supporter of the administration’s decision to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and block additional LNG export projects. The latter is unpopular with both Democrats and Republicans in Pennsylvania.
But climate activists see the Harris-Walz ticket as the best possible ally for their agenda.
“We’re going to f***ing win this thing, and then we’re gonna f***ing build a better world!!!” posted Aaron Regunberg, senior climate policy counsel at Public Citizen, on social media.
But those policies would impact Pennsylvania’s natural gas economy, ranked second in the nation behind Texas by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Taylor accused the Harris-Walz ticket of wanting to “snuff out American coal and natural gas” through its environmental goals. Calling the duo’s energy goals “impossible,” he said they would only enrich China.
Other groups question how the Harris-Walz ticket will appeal to more moderate voters who want to embrace natural gas and create blue collar jobs. The natural gas industry contributed $41 billion to the Pennsylvania economy in 2022 and paid $6 billion in royalties to private land owners and the government.
“Natural gas bridges political divides in Pennsylvania because the industry provides universally supported benefits: quality jobs, energy cost savings, and environmental advancement.” Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Callahan told DVJournal.
A 2022 Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion poll found 86 percent of Keystone State residents believe natural gas is important to the economy. And they like lower energy costs and reduced carbon emissions.
Taylor said everyone knows how important natural gas development helped Pennsylvania. “There should be no debate about the essential role of responsible natural gas development and use,” he said.
