US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a watch get together after … [+]
Throughout a heated presidential debate on Tuesday evening, former President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that Kamala Harris would ban hydraulic fracturing (fracking) if she turned president. He asserted, “If she received the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will finish on day one.”
In response, Harris clarified, “I can’t ban fracking. I’ve not banned fracking as Vice President of the US. In actual fact, I used to be the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Discount Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”
Trump’s declare wasn’t completely with out foundation, as Harris had beforehand said throughout her 2019 presidential marketing campaign, “There’s no query I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Nevertheless, the fact is extra nuanced, as I defined in a 2019 article, Why A Ban On Fracking Will By no means Occur. In that piece, I identified that Harris, together with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, had expressed help for a fracking ban.
Even Joe Biden campaigned on “no new fracking” earlier than adjusting his place to acknowledge the need of fracking as a part of an power transition, which I detailed in Joe Biden Shifts To A Real looking Fracking Stance.
The reality is, political candidates usually make statements to enchantment to their base. Whether or not Harris was pandering or genuinely believed at one level that fracking must be banned, there may be presently no sensible method to cease it.
Fracking, which dates again to the late Nineteen Forties, sparked a U.S. oil and fuel manufacturing increase when mixed with horizontal drilling about 20 years in the past. This surge in manufacturing has made the U.S. the world’s main producer of each oil and pure fuel.
Most of this manufacturing occurs on personal land, that means that, even when Trump believes in any other case, Harris would haven’t any authority to finish fracking in Pennsylvania on her first day in workplace.
New legal guidelines could be required to halt fracking, and given its vital position in U.S. power manufacturing, it is extremely unlikely Congress would move such a legislation.
Consequently, it is a moot level. As I wrote in 2019, I nonetheless don’t consider a ban on fracking will ever occur.
