As California Attorney General and as vice president, Kamala Harris has waged a legal and regulatory war on the fossil fuels industry – a pattern that she has made clear would continue if she wins the presidency. The energy crisis facing other Western nations provides a cautionary tale about the long-term consequences of her policies.
While she was California’s top cop, Harris went to great lengths to harass the fossil fuels industry in her state – even as actual crime spiraled out of control. In 2015, Harris played a critical role in sinking a proposal to build an oil storage facility in Pittsburg, California. Two years later, Attorney General Harris aided Democrats in the city of Benicia in their effort to block a refinery from shipping crude oil through the city via train – helping scuttle an entire project that could’ve lowered fuel prices for the entire region and created hundreds of jobs.
In 2019, while running for president, Harris also promised to ban fracking – a key source of jobs and investment in states like Pennsylvania. Although Harris has since reversed her position out of political necessity, voters have every reason to be skeptical of her true intentions if she occupies the Oval Office. Along with being an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, in 2020 Harris teamed up with far-left progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to introduce the “Climate Equity Act,” a radical bill that would have decimated the American energy industry.
As vice president, Harris has been an instrumental part of President Joe Biden’s disastrous energy agenda. On day one of his administration, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline project, killing hundreds of jobs and immediately undermining hard-won U.S. energy independence. Biden also halted all future oil and gas leases on federal lands, along with canceling some previously-issued leases.
Fuel and electricity prices have skyrocketed under Biden, and some estimates suggest that electricity costs could double again in parts of the country next year thanks to Biden-Harris policies. By dumping $1.2 trillion in subsidies into solar and wind through the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), Biden and Harris have undercut coal, oil, and natural gas – not only increasing costs, but leaving the country dangerously dependent on unreliable renewable energy sources.
According to Harvard economist Gordon Hanson, a “transition” away from fossil fuels as Harris has proposed will likely cost at least 1.7 million jobs, including 729,000 in the coal, oil, and gas extraction industries, 731,000 in the metallurgic industry, and 200,000 in coal and gas-fueled power plant industry.
Given those shocking numbers, it’s no surprise that vulnerable Democrats like Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are trying to distance themselves from Biden and Harris. In a recent Casey ad, the three-term senator claims he “bucked Biden to protect fracking” – a rather dubious claim given that Casey voted for the IRA, which directly undercut the Pennsylvania fracking industry.
Voters still on the fence about Harris’s energy agenda should look to Europe and other Western nations that adopted many of the same policies Harris is now proposing years ago.
After Germany shuttered its coal plants and poured billions into wind and solar, it became reliant on natural gas imports, primarily from Russia. The danger of that approach was fully exposed following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war as the nation of 84 million faced widespread blackouts. Berlin quickly scrambled to restart its coal plants.
“Effective and reliable renewable solutions do not currently exist,” Professor Joachim Kirchhoff, an economics expert and co-author of the energy policy for East Germany following Germany’s unification, told me. In addition to reliability concerns, he continued, “the profitability rates of green energy companies are often ten to fifteen times lower than those of their fossil fuel competitors.”
The IRA, Kirchhoff said, drawing from his own experience in Germany “is not sustainable for U.S. taxpayers… Subsidies extend project timelines, affect product quality, and add to the deficit.”
Dutch economist and historian Dr. Henk Van Straaten added that “the rapid pace of growth for green energy companies today – driven by government subsidies – can lead companies to develop weak fundamentals, making them more vulnerable under pressure.”
British Petroleum, one of the largest companies in Europe, announced in 2020 that it planned to cut fossil fuel production by 40 percent by 2030. But earlier this month, following news that the company’s profits had fallen by 30 percent in the first half of 2024, BP dropped its 2030 target.
In Australia, leading energy companies, including Woodside and Origin, recently abandoned a hydrogen energy project, citing “uncertainty around the pace and timing of development of the hydrogen market” – even with $8.7 billion in public subsidies for the project. The ruling Labor Party has simultaneously refused to invest in Australia’s abundant natural gas reserves, leaving the country reliant on foreign imports.
Commenting on the broader global trend of returning to gas and oil production, Australian National Party Senator Matt Canavan said it was rational since the market tends to drift away from radical green policies. BP is “just waking up to the reality that the world’s demand for fossil fuels is growing, not shrinking,” he told Sky News television.
But while the rest of the West is being forced to rethink the practicality of liberal fantasies for a “green revolution,” Kamala Harris has not seemed to take note. If she emerges victorious next week, the United States may well have to contend with an energy agenda that has failed everywhere it has been tried – including in the United States by Harris herself over the past four years.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
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