Why a vote for Kamala Harris for president is a wasted climate vote in California – vote Green instead  

By Mike Feinstein

If you are a climate voter in California, you could be throwing away your vote if you vote for Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee for president.

Harris doesn’t need your vote to win California’s 54 Electoral College votes. Hilary Clinton (D) easily carried the state by 4.3 million votes in 2016; and Joe Biden (D) by 5.1 million in 2020. This year’s latest poll has Harris leading Republican Donald Trump in the state 59% to 34% — freeing you to vote on policy and send a clear message to the next presidential administration. 

Concerned about our climate emergency? Harris’ world view should be deeply troubling — and is wholly insufficient to address the severity of the crisis. To justify her change from opposing fracking to supporting it, Harris argues that the $370 billion invested in clean energy supply and a green energy economy (via the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act [IRA]) justifies simultaneously expanding oil and gas production – an Orwellian inversion of logic, when carbon emissions must be reduced rapidly and drastically to prevent catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

Even though the International Energy Agency and other scientists say no new fossil fuel projects are needed for the transition to net zero CO2, domestic oil production has expanded to record levels under Biden/Harris — with more fracking and oil and gas leases — and even drilling on more public lands than under Trump. Harris’ supporters argue this was the best deal possible, because to pass the IRA, Democrats needed the vote of pro-fossil fuel Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV); and they point to the IRA’s promised 50% CO2 reduction by 2030 — which unfortunately won’t be met, nor lead to needed deep decarbonization.

Putting aside this inconvenient truth, Harris could publicly aspire to further green energy investment if elected with a sufficient Congressional majority. She could point to the $555 billion in the 2021 Build Back Better legislation Manchin killed, which was less than the $3.5 trillion Biden/Harris originally sought, the $16.3 trillion Bernie Sanders campaigned on in 2020, and the $27.5 trillion plan of 2020 Green presidential candidate Howie Hawkins — which priced out how to eliminate global greenhouse emissions entirely by 2030.

But Harris is saying nothing about greater investment, and has been noticeably silent on climate change specifics — allegedly to maintain a ‘big tent’ appeal among US voters, but leaving open how visionary she really is — even if it’s the difference between a ‘moderate’ capitalist Democrat and an eco-visionary Green. 

This overall lack of clarity led the youth-driven Sunrise Movement to withhold their endorsement of Harris. Multiple other environmental groups large and small have endorsed Harris, hoping to gain access to lobby her administration if elected, while simultaneously pointing to the extensive climate damage a second Trump administration and a Project 2025 agenda would bring. 

But your role as a California voter is not about access, it’s about policy. Since Harris will win California easily, you don’t have to play the game of ‘not standing for anything to get elected.’ You can vote based upon the substantial difference between the comprehensive Green New Deal (GND) of the Green Party and its 2024 presidential candidate Jill Stein – and the faux, non-binding GND resolution from the Democrats that then U.S. Senator Harris co-sponsored in 2019, then distanced herself from in 2020. 

The Green Party introduced the Green New Deal into American politics back in 2010. Not only do Greens call for a faster timetable and greater investment to reduce CO2 – which is where at a minimum CA climate voters should be pushing Harris – but Greens understand that capitalism can’t fix the climate crisis, which gets back to the ‘world view’ question. 

The Green Party GND invokes 1930s New Deal-style public programs and collective planning. Democrats hijack the ‘New Deal’ term, but offer neoliberal programs of public subsides for private corporations and consumers — a hit or miss, uncoordinated and insufficient approach that puts much of our future in the hands of for-profit corporations. The Green Party’s GND includes a large measure of public ownership and planning in key economic sectors, in order to coordinate the complexities of a rapid transition to 100% clean energy, and to zero and then negative carbon emissions. This should be the ultimate goal, to get to a safe level of atmospheric CO2 that can stabilize the climate.  Stein would initiate that process by declaring a climate emergency utilizing presidential powers associated with the National Emergencies Act, Defense Production Act, and the Stafford Act, and issue executive actions to expedite national and international climate action.

Imagine if a million climate votes were cast in California by voting Green. More than two million Californians voted for Bernie Sanders in both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party primaries. Almost 2.7 million California voters are 18-to-25-years old, many who understand this crisis is existential in their lifetime. Then there are Greens, Peace & Freedom Party and other climate voters. From these sometimes overlapping constituencies, a million climate votes could be assembled by voting Green, and Harris would still win the state overwhelmingly.   

If California used ranked-choice voting (RCV) for its presidential elections, this approach would be even more obvious. Maybe a million Green votes for president would prompt state Democrats to place a measure on the statewide ballot to enact RCV for president, which would empower voters to reflect their preferences over more candidates than just one. 

But if California climate voters give Harris their vote without getting anything for it, opponents of needed change can say there’s no mandate for it, because Harris ran a campaign without saying anything and people voted for it, even when they had an easy and superior alternative.  

It’s your choice and our planet.  A climate vote in California is voting Green.

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Michael Feinstein is a former Santa Monica Mayor and City Councilmember, a co-founder of the Green Party of California and a 2018 candidate for California Secretary of State