Before Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage to accept her party’s nomination for president tonight, another topic is expected to enter the spotlight: climate change. While Democrats haven’t made it a huge focus of the convention so far, they plan to center it more tonight (according to NPR) in speeches by the likes of Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in an effort to highlight the Biden administration’s wins on the issue.
Though it remains unclear how exactly climate will figure into Harris’ agenda, many environmental groups are still lining up to endorse her. Others appear more hesitant.
One of the groups that has yet to endorse her is the youth-led Sunrise Movement. Sunrise’s early campaigns targeted newly-elected Democrats like Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who participated in one of its earliest and most notable protests to push for climate action, a sit-in at Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s office in 2018. Then the group helped push Harris on climate during her last presidential campaign, commending her support for the Green New Deal and her commitment to banning fracking. But these were promises Harris has since walked back.
Recently, Sunrise has been vocal about its support for a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza, holding a protest at President Biden’s campaign office in February and supporting the Uncommitted movement, which has been fighting to speak at the DNC. (Earlier today, my colleague Noah Lanard published a copy of the speech they would have given.)
Hours before climate night and the last night of the DNC, I talked to Sunrise Movement co-founder and communications director Stevie O’Hanlon about how the organization views Harris at this crucial moment.
I’m wondering if you can talk about the evolution of Harris as someone who said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” and that she was supportive of the Green New Deal, to the person who’s about to take the stage tonight at the DNC.
I think the big takeaway I have about Harris from the last six years is that she’s someone who is really responsive to pressure and the political conditions. And in 2018, young people around the country generated an immense amount of pressure on politicians to put forward a bold plan on climate change, to talk about it like the crisis it is, and to support the Green New Deal.
And that was with Sunrise, with the decision to sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s office with AOC, to the climate strikes, in which hundreds of thousands of young people participated. And Harris responded to that pressure, and that gives me hope that if she is elected, then she can be moved by pressure from young people.
In the short time Harris has been campaigning for president, climate hasn’t been a main focus. What do you at Sunrise think about Harris being kind of silent on this issue so far?
I think there are two sides of this: One is that even in 2019 and 2020 when she was running for president, climate was never the thing that she talked about the most, even though she did have some really strong positions on climate.
It makes a lot of sense right now that she is emphasizing abortion, that she’s emphasizing taking on corporations and addressing the cost of living, and talking about her plan to make prescription medication and everyday essentials more affordable.
“If we don’t see bold action in this next presidential administration, the world that our generation and future generations is going to live in is going to be a scary one.”
I think the other side of that is that she’s missing an opportunity to talk about one of the issues where voters trust her the most over Trump. There was a poll just the other day [from Hart Research on behalf of Climate Power] that showed that climate is the area where Harris has the biggest trust advantage over Trump, even bigger than abortion. And if she wants to capitalize on that advantage and build on it, she needs to talk about it.
There are a lot of ways for her to talk about climate change in the frame of freedom, in the frame of taking on the cost of living crisis and making life more affordable. And lastly, I think, frankly, we have [five] years left to stop the climate crisis and if we don’t see bold action in the coming years, in this next presidential administration, the world that our generation and future generations is going to live in is going to be a scary one, and anyone running for president right now has a responsibility to talk about that.
Sunrise has been pretty vocal about the need for a ceasefire and very aligned with the Uncommitted delegates. But Sunrise didn’t really have a huge presence at the DNC. Why was that?
The Chicago chapter was [protesting the DNC] and had a big banner saying, “Fund Communities not Genocide”
I think at the end of the day, we’re standing behind the Uncommitted movement and their calls right now for a Palestinian to be able to speak at the Democratic National Convention. That is the bare minimum that the Democratic Party needs to do to show the millions of voters who are horrified by the genocide happening in Palestine that they are the party that that should get their votes.
A lot of people in Sunrise have gone to Chicago, but we didn’t make it a big focus of our year, because we’re focused on doing a lot of local organizing, responding to climate disasters over the summer, and heading into the general election. And in organizing to talk to millions of young people about the face of this election.
It’s logistically challenging to get a ton of people to Chicago, and so I think we were focused on supporting people who are in the region already to participate.
How are you all positioning yourselves in response to Harris? Obviously, you have a Get Out the Vote movement supporting her, but also you have been vocal about wanting to see more climate mentions from her.
If we are to make an endorsement in this election, it’ll be through member vote. And I think right now, most of our members are looking for specifics for Harris on what she will do to tackle the climate crisis. And I think many also also want to see her more strongly push for a ceasefire and back the calls for an arms embargo to Israel.
I think we are really clear that Donald Trump would be an existential threat to our climate, to our democracy. He has promised oil and gas executives that he, in exchange for a billion dollars to his campaign, would “drill baby drill,” would roll back decades old environmental regulations protecting air and water so that these companies can make more money and not have to worry about rules. And he implied that there might not be an election in 2028 if he’s president.
So we absolutely need to defeat Donald Trump, and we’re going to have conversations with hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of young people leading up to November about the stakes of this election and encouraging people to vote for Harris. Not because we agree with everything that she says, but that we think that she is the best choice for our movement.
Anything else you want to discuss about presidential electoral politics and climate change?
One thing that we didn’t talk as much about is the DNC platform, which I think is interesting. The DNC platform in 2024 is quite strong on climate change. The 2024 platform calls out Big Oil, pledges to make polluters pay, and targets oil and gas company subsidies, which is really substantial.
Harris has been on the campaign trail talking about her record as attorney general, of taking on polluters, of creating the first environmental justice unit in the country. And I think that is a really strong message, and something that really contrasts with Trump, especially because of how blatant he has been about courting oil and gas executives’ money to fund his campaign. I think there is a real opportunity for Democrats to continue to emphasize that message.
