New Mexico
What would a Harris presidency mean for the climate? • Source New Mexico
After weeks of intense media speculation and sustained pressure from Democratic lawmakers, major donors, and senior advisors, President Joe Biden has announced that he is bowing out of the presidential race. He is the first sitting president to step aside so close to Election Day. “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus entirely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a letter on Sunday.
He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take his place. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he said in another statement. Not long after, Harris announced via the Biden campaign that she intends to run for president. “I am honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said.
During his term, President Biden managed to shepherd a surprising number of major policies into law with a razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate. His crowning achievement is signing the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — the biggest climate spending law in U.S. history, with the potential to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 42 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In announcing his withdrawal, Biden called it “the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world.”
Despite his legislative successes, the 81-year-old Democrat couldn’t weather widespread blowback following a debate performance in June in which he appeared frail and struck many in his party as ill-equipped to lead the country for another four years. He will leave office with a portion of his proposed climate agenda unpassed and the U.S. still projected to miss his administration’s goal of reducing emissions at least 50 percent by 2030.
Former president Donald Trump has vowed to undo many of the policies Biden accomplished if he becomes president, including parts of the IRA. And scores of his key advisors and former members of his presidential administration contributed to a blueprint that advocates for scrapping the vast majority of the nation’s climate and environmental protections. Whichever Democrat runs against Trump has a weighty mandate: protect America’s already-tenuous climate and environmental legacy from Republican attacks.
With Biden’s endorsement, Vice President Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, is the favored Democratic nominee, but that doesn’t mean she will automatically get the nomination. There are fewer than 30 days until the Democratic National Convention on August 19. The thousands of Democratic delegates who already cast their votes for Biden will either decide on a nominee before the convention, or hold an open convention to find their new candidate — something that hasn’t been done since 1968.
As vice president, Harris argued for the allocation of $20 billion for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, aimed at aiding disadvantaged communities facing climate impacts, and frequently promoted the IRA at events, touting the bill’s investments in clean energy jobs, including installation of energy-efficient lighting, and replacing gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. She was also the highest-ranking U.S. official to attend the international climate talks at COP28 in Dubai last year, where she announced a U.S. commitment to double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. At that same conference, Harris announced a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations adapt to climate challenges, although Politico reported that the sum was “subject to the availability of funds,” according to the Treasury Department.
“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,” Evergreen Action, the climate-oriented political group, said in a statement.
Harris caught some flak for using a potentially overstated “$1 trillion over 10 years” figure to describe the Biden administration’s climate investments. She got that sum from adding up all of the administration’s major investments over the past four years, some of which are only vaguely connected to climate change.
As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris proposed a $10 trillion climate plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 on the campaign trail, including 100-percent carbon-neutral electricity by 2030. Under the plan, 50 percent of new vehicles sold would be zero-emission by 2030; and 100 percent of cars by 2035. But that proposal, like similarly ambitious climate change proposals released by other Democrats during that election cycle, was nothing more than a campaign wishlist. A better indicator of what her plans for climate change as president would look like — better, even, than her record as vice president, as much of her agenda was set by the Biden administration — could be buried in her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017.
As district attorney, Harris created an environmental justice unit to address environmental crimes affecting San Francisco’s poorest residents and prosecuted several companies including U-Haul for violation of hazardous waste laws. Harris later touted her environmental justice unit as the first such unit in the country. An investigation found the unit only filed a handful of lawsuits, though, and none of them were against the city’s major industrial polluters.
As attorney general, Harris secured an $86 million settlement from Volkswagen for rigging its vehicles with emissions-cheating software and investigated ExxonMobil over its climate change disclosures. She also filed a civil lawsuit against Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips for environmental violations at gas stations, which eventually resulted in a $11.5 million settlement. And she conducted a criminal investigation of an oil company over a 2015 spill in Santa Barbara. The company was found guilty and convicted on nine criminal charges.
“We must do more,” Harris said late last year at the climate summit in Dubai. “Our action collectively, or worse, our inaction will impact billions of people for decades to come.”
Clayton Aldern contributed writing and reporting to this article.
Federal, state, and local officials were in Santa Fe on July 19 to announce $1 million of funding for Northern New Mexico through the EPA Brownfields program. Brownfields are former industrial or commercial sites where contamination stands in the way of productive re-use of the land.
Five hundred thousand dollars will go to the City of Raton to assess several sites where environmental cleanup is necessary.
The other $500,000 goes to a tuition-free education and certification program that Santa Fe Community College has offered over the past 15 years.
SFCC’s EPA jobs program has trained about 200 students and led to 74 percent landing jobs relating to environmental cleanup.
New Mexico Environment Department cabinet secretary James Kenney spoke at the announcement event, praising the educational program that bolsters the state’s environmental work force.
“When folks are being trained right here through this money, and have an understanding of how to clean up Brownfields, they inherently have an understanding how to then address uranium mining; how to clean up those Superfund sites; how to clean up those non-Superfund sites that just haven’t made the list, but are just—let’s call them ‘economic opportunities’ to really revitalize New Mexico,” said Kenney.
One of the graduates of the program attended the event, held at SFCC’s biowall. Isaiah Calabaza, who was born and raised on Santo Domingo Pueblo, completed the EPA Brownfields training program in 2023.
Calabaza, said that when he was younger, he got involved as an environmental activist, protesting projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline.
He said that the New Mexico Environmental Job Training Program transformed the way he looked at having an impact on our environmental future.
“Laws, regulations, policies—there’s actually things that you can do besides yelling and raising a flag,” said Calabaza. “You can actually go to school and get education and be in these meetings, in these rooms, where people are actually talking about what is going on, and you can use your voice to actually make a change.”
Shortly after completing the program, Calabaza landed a job on an environmental mediation team working at Los Alamos National Laboratory on a nine-month contract. Now he’s in the running for an apprenticeship position involving nuclear waste cleanup.
SFCC is currently accepting applications for the next run of its program, in September.
Nearly 30 Arkansans from various fire departments and emergency teams across the state helped with search and rescue efforts in New Mexico, where deadly wildfires exacerbated the flood risk for communities.
Danny Akines, a training and logistics officer from the Pulaski County Office of Emergency Management, was one of those deployed to monitor Las Vegas, a town of about 13,000 near Sante Fe, and Ruidoso, a small mountain village about 200 miles south of Albuquerque.
From June 29 to July 13, Akines traveled with the Arkansas team back and forth from Las Vegas to Ruidoso monitoring potential flash floods and training for swift water rescue. Their skills were put to the test during two days of major flooding in Ruidoso where they rescued 21 people and three dogs, evacuated 14 people and reported 15 more who remained in place.
“We get called to go right around the corner, out of sight of where we’re at, and there’s a newborn baby and two women trapped in a car,” Akines recalled of his first water rescue. “They’ve been kind of washed sideways…and the current is taking them off.”
Over the two most intensive days of the two-week trip, the Arkansas team spent eight hours responding to assistance calls of people trapped in their homes or cars. The water, which traveled down a nearby mountain faster than anything Akines said he’s ever seen in Arkansas, carried logs, boulders and debris from homes destroyed in the wildfires.
“It goes fast, but that’s what we went for,” Akines said. “We hate that this type of event is happening to those people, but we’re there to help. We’re glad we’re there when it happens.”
FEMA trailers on their way to Ruidoso; at least 856 homes lost
No flood-related fatalities have been reported, though two people were reported dead from the wildfires that destroyed at least 850 houses in New Mexico, according to a report from Source NM. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently approved the state’s request for temporary housing, which should provide relief for people who are couch surfing or staying in hotels.
“We’ve got them spread out,” Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford told Source NM. “We’re trying not to lose them forever, because we need them to work and live here.”
After the Arkansas rescue team safely made contact with people in need, they transported them to higher ground or to a shelter managed by the local community. Akines said local officials and community members expressed their appreciation throughout their presence in the area.
“We’re just glad that we’re able to help people,” Akines said. “Whether it’s here, there or wherever. All the guys are very professional, no matter where we go, and they’re very dedicated.”
The New Mexico project marked Akines’ third deployment with the Pulaski County Office of Emergency Management, where he has volunteered since 2009 and worked full time for two years. His other trips included providing aid in Texas and Florida as hurricanes threatened the states.
The Arkansas agencies footed the initial bills for the emergency deployment, though the state is expected to provide a reimbursement, Akines said. New Mexico officials will then reimburse the state of Arkansas for its services.
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