Given the very real possibility that she'll be at or near the pinnacle of our politics for somewhere between four and 16 years, it's worth asking how she will handle the gravest crisis that looms over our planet. That's not the same as asking if she should be elected, because, on climate issues, a shrink-wrapped pallet of frozen Ore-Ida French fries would be a vast improvement on the incumbent. But it's going to take an unflinching, unrelenting effort to transform America's energy system and lead a similar process globally. Is she committed to that?
Her defenders point to a number of powerful statements that she made over the course of her Presidential primary campaign. She'd eliminate the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal. She'd tell the Department of Justice to investigate oil and gas companies. "When you take away that money because you take them to court and sue them, as I have done, it's extraordinary how they will change behaviors," Harris said. "Maybe this is the prosecutor in me. They have to be held accountable." Harris has been particularly outspoken about environmental injustice: just six days before she got the V.P. nod, she joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to introduce the Climate Equity Act, which, as the Times explained, "would create a dedicated Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability within the White House and require the federal government to rate the effect that every environmental legislation or regulation would have on low-income communities."
If there's a rub, it's that, to date, she hasn't been that eager to really stand up to power on this issue. During a forum last year, Harris said that she had sued ExxonMobil over its climate denial, but that's not true. After investigative reporters showed that company executives had spent decades lying about their knowledge of climate change, many state attorneys general announced investigations. Only two, however, actually went to court: New York, under Eric Schneiderman and his successors, and Massachusetts, under the very gutsy Maura Healey. Harris, in California, investigated but never pulled the trigger -- a grave disappointment to environmentalists, who knew that the country's most economically powerful state would have been a useful ally.
Such reluctance is not admirable, but it is perhaps understandable: California is an oil state, if less so than it used to be, and the big oil companies are major players in its politics in a way that isn't true in New York or Massachusetts. Harris sued oil companies in California for local pollution, but those aren't existential attacks on the industry, the way the climate litigation against ExxonMobil would have been. So she punted, in the best case because she wanted to live to fight another day. What will she do if she becomes Vice-President? I imagine that her courage will depend on the climate movement's success in eroding the political power of the oil companies. The weaker the fossil-fuel conglomerates become, the less scary they are. (Oil barons understand this, which is why they're spending large sums to reà «lect Trump). My guess is that Harris is a run-of-the mill politician, who will go where the footing is easiest. That's less attractive than principled and unbending leadership, because that means movements can't demobilize after Election Day. The pushing never ceases. (I'm a Bernie guy.)
When politicians are weathervanes, you need to make the wind blow. And the wind is blowing in Washington and in the Atlantic, where, last week, we reached the letter "K" in the hurricane naming list 10 days earlier than ever before. Earlier this week, for instance, there was a kerfuffle after the D.N.C. dropped from its platform a pledge to end fossil-fuel subsidies. Within 24 hours, a spirited response from disappointed environmentalists produced a new pledge from the Biden campaign that his commitment hadn't wavered, and that he indeed planned on "rallying the rest of the world" to do likewise. That's politics in action. Or consider one closely watched Democratic Senate primary: on September 1st, Massachusetts voters will decide between the incumbent, Ed Markey, and the challenger, Joseph Kennedy III. When the race began, Kennedy had a big lead in the polls, based largely on his last name and his Disney Hall of Presidents resemblance to its most famous bearer. But Markey (whom I admire, and have worked with on environmental legislation) fought back. And he did it largely on the strength of his climate credentials. Markey is the Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal, and his House counterpart, Ocasio-Cortez, cut a nifty ad for him.
The latest polling shows that the 74-year-old has moved ahead of the 39-year-old political scion, largely thanks to a fifty-one-per-cent lead among eighteen- to twenty-nine-year olds. Teen Vogue, which has become must-read political journalism, wrote that Markey is "the subject of countless stan accounts. His outfits go viral. Teens cling to his every word." (Note to Joe Biden.) The Sunrise Movement -- the group of under-thirties who organized the sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office that served as a coming-out party for the Green New Deal -- produced a YouTube video for Markey last week, which may be my favorite political ad of all time. (Watch till the end for one of the best knife twists in campaign history). If Markey wins, he will go back to the Senate a national progressive hero; more to the point, he will have demonstrated that truly taking on climate change can pay off politically. That lesson won't be lost on anyone, Harris included.
Passing the Mic
Michelle Wu has been a Boston city councillor since 2013, when (at the age of twenty-eight) she became the first Asian-American woman to hold the job. In 2016, her colleagues elected her city-council chair, and she was the first woman of color to hold that post. She recently introduced plans for a city-scale Green New Deal -- and her team is working to make it a template for cities worldwide.
If we don't do anything about climate change, what's Boston going to look like in fifty years? Give us a little tour of the city's landmarks and neighborhoods.
Thanks to local researchers, we have a pretty clear picture of where we're headed under business as usual. Most of Boston's downtown area was created through huge landfill projects in the eighteen-hundreds, so we're really vulnerable to flooding, as storms intensify and the ocean takes back this low-lying, man-made land. By 2070, with more than three feet of sea-level rise, you'll be paddling the Freedom Trail by kayak. During Nor'easters, Boston Harbor will spill over nearly a mile to the Chinatown Gate. But what should really move us to action is the suffering and displacement we'd face in our neighborhoods. As luxury condo buildings of the Seaport and other areas are abandoned, because they'll be underwater every day at high tide, safe and dry areas will become unaffordable for many. When every day of summer is hotter than ninety degrees, outdoor workers and residents who can't afford air-conditioning will face extreme risk. Already wide racial and economic disparities will grow, as communities of color and low-income families bear the brunt of these costs and injustices.
You've put racial justice front and center in addressing the city's environmental future: explain the rationale.
We see across the world that the destructive impacts of climate change always fall squarely on historically marginalized communities, and Boston is no different. COVID-19 has exposed how concentrated and compounding these injustices are. Black and brown communities and low-income families have been devastated by the virus, owing to preà «xisting health disparities from more exposure to pollution, less stable housing, unhealthy working conditions, and greater risk of exposure as essential workers. The roots of this public-health crisis are the same as the climate crisis: a political and economic system built on structural racism and injustices that threaten us all, because each person's health and well-being is so deeply intertwined with that of the entire community. In other words, climate justice is racial and economic justice. Creating truly resilient, sustainable communities means eliminating poverty and dismantling systemic racism.
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