Why Kamala Harris Won’t Ban Fracking

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 gained the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will finish on day one.”

In response, Harris clarified, “I cannot ban fracking. I’ve not banned fracking as Vice President of the US. In reality, I used to be the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Discount Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”

Trump’s declare wasn’t fully 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.”

Nonetheless, the truth 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 Life like Fracking Stance.

The reality is, political candidates typically make statements to attraction to their base. Whether or not Harris was pandering or genuinely believed at one level that fracking needs to be banned, there may be presently no sensible technique to cease it.

Fracking, which dates again to the late Forties, sparked a U.S. oil and gasoline manufacturing growth 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 gasoline.

Most of this manufacturing occurs on personal land, which 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 can be required to halt fracking, and given its important position in U.S. power manufacturing, it is extremely unlikely Congress would go such a legislation.

Consequently, it is a moot level. As I wrote in 2019, I nonetheless don’t imagine a ban on fracking will ever occur.