Climate change to get its moment in the sun at Democratic convention on Thursday
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Climate and energy policy will be featured on the final night of the Democratic National Convention.
Before Vice President Harris speaks Thursday, the evening’s event is expected to include videos and speakers to highlight climate policy from the Biden administration and discuss job creation. The scheduled programming was shared with NPR by a source familiar with the planning who is not authorized to speak publicly.
The featured speakers include Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is the first Native American to be tapped in to lead that department, Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, and John Russell, who is among the content creators at the convention. Russell, who has more than 180,000 followers on TikTok, is expected to talk about his home of West Virginia and the benefits of the “clean energy economy.”
Although climate change was not a major focus over the first three nights of the convention, it did come up in several speeches. The planned attention to the issue Thursday signals Democrats see climate and energy as something to campaign on.
“Climate was not a campaign issue eight or 12 years ago. It was extremely difficult to get climate into one of the major debates, it was seen as a peripheral and not a central issue,” said Manish Bapna, president of the NRDC Action Fund.
“What we have seen is climate change is a kitchen table issue because it is about cost of energy, it is about jobs, creating a more dynamic economy, confronting extreme weather. So we are seeing climate as part of the mainstream conversation,” Bapna explained.
Earlier this week, a coalition of climate groups announced a $55 million advertising campaign supporting Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket.
The LCV Victory fund, the EDF action Votes, Climate Power and Future Forward have all invested in ads that will run in swing states.
“We are running a lot of ads, a lot of content, to younger people, to Black voters, to Latino voters, that are strictly about the issues themselves, that is just about the clean energy plan and what it means to people’s lives,” Lori Lodes, executive director of the progressive group Climate Power told NPR at a climate-focused DNC event.
Several climate-focused groups have also been working to register voters in key swing states. The League of Conservation Voters has boasted its nonpartisan effort of registering over 100,000 voters, nearly a third of its 2024 goal.
Advocates throughout the convention boasted that Harris delivered the tie-breaking vote in the Senate as vice president, sending the Inflation Reduction Act, the historic climate spending bill, to Biden’s desk that former President Trump has vowed to repeal. During his own speech on opening night, Biden touted the launch of a Climate Corps and the creation of jobs in the clean energy sector.
Several of the groups joined other environmental and energy-focused groups to host “Climate Voters Go All In,” an event during the convention featuring speakers like actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who boasted of being an NRDC member), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“Our messaging cannot be ‘okay we did the big climate bill, everyone should love us,’” Buttigieg said. “It will either be developed or destroyed. Let us make sure that this legislation meets its potential.”
NPR's Michael Copley contributed to this story.
