Fracking pumpjacks. These pieces of equipment are crucial to oil field and fracking operations. (Getty Images.)
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both say they don’t want to get rid of fracking, but that’s about where their similarities seem to end when it comes to their stance on the environment.
Harris flip-flopped on her position of fracking. When she ran for president in 2019 she said she wanted to ban fracking, but changed her tune when she became President Joe Biden’s running mate. Now, she’s saying she would not ban fracking if elected president.
“Let’s talk about fracking because we’re here in Pennsylvania,” Harris said during last month’s presidential debate in Philadelphia. “I made that very clear in 2020 I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States. … My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”
Pennsylvania is a key swing state in this year’s election and is one of the country’s largest producers of natural gas.
Trump, who has been quick to point out Harris’ change in her stance on fracking, says he wants to increase fracking leases on federal lands.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said over the summer at the Republican National Convention.
Despite changing her stance on fracking, Save Ohio Parks doesn’t think that will hurt Harris.
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“I think I see that personally as a way to moderate her stances,” said Melinda Zemper, a volunteer with Save Ohio Parks. “Harris has been supportive of clean energy in the past, so we see her as more malleable in the terms of creating energy policy that is aggressive enough to allow us to have our children and grandchildren exist on a livable planet.”
Fracking is the process of injecting liquid into the ground at a high pressure to extract oil or gas. It has been documented in over 30 states, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Vermont, New York, Maryland, Washington and California all ban fracking, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 44% of Americans support more fracking for oil and gas in the United States and 53% are against it. The United States is producing more oil and natural gas than ever before and way more than any other country.
Drilling companies can frack in Ohio State Parks and the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission has granted the mineral rights to many oil and gas companies so they can frack under land owned by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Department of Transportation.
There were more than 1,400 fracking incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio between 2018 and September 2023, according to FracTracker Alliance — a nonprofit that collects data on fracking pipelines. About 10% of those incidents were reported as fires or explosions.
“What ends up happening is you end up taking places like Appalachia, eastern part of Ohio, southeastern part of Ohio, and you make it like, frankly, a sacrifice zone in the name of resource colonization,” said Ted Auch, Fractracker Alliance Midwest Program Director. “We did this with coal, we do it with steel, we do it with timber, and now we’re doing with oil and gas.”
Presidents do not have the ability to ban fracking without support from Congress. A president can, however, impact fracking on federal land, Auch said.
“The way that I looked at it is like the Democrats talk a big game, end up doing very little in terms of pushing the needle on a renewable future, and they they are more polite and discreet about how they go about business, while the Republicans say the quiet part out loud, but at the end of the day, both parties are beholden to fossil fuel industry to varying degrees,” he said.
Harris
When Harris was California’s attorney general, she criminally prosecuted a fossil fuel entity for the 2015 Santa Barbara oil spill.
As vice president, she cast the tie-breaking vote for passing the Inflation Reduction Act. As a result, 109,000 Ohio families have saved over $150 million in clean energy investments and 18 Ohio projects have received $7.1 billion in investments, according to Save Ohio Parks.
“She has a very good track record on our climate, on the environment and things like that that would affect what she said about fracking,” said Cathy Cowan Becker, steering committee member at Save Ohio Park.
Biden tried to stop new public lands drilling, but his order to pause leasing was reversed by a federal judge.
Trump
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, but Biden reentered the Agreement on his first day in office. Trump also rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations during his four years in office.
On multiple occasions, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and Save Ohio Parks worries there would be more fracking in Ohio if Trump were elected.
“Trump doesn’t control what happens on the state level, but that sets the tone on the federal level,” Becker said. “We literally are looking at a non livable planet if Trump wins.”
Under the Trump administration, the federal government leased more land for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and in Utah.
Project 2025, written by the Heritage Foundation, would significantly alter the Environmental Protection Agency, change the Department of the Interior and talks about breaking up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the parent agency for the National Weather Service.
“What’s described in that document for those agencies is quite chilling, honestly,” Auch said.
The Presidential Transition Project lays out the first 180 days in office for the next-right wing administration. Even though Trump has tried to distance himself from this, several former Trump administration officials helped create Project 2025.
Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on X.
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