Sustainable Switch: What are Kamala Harris’ ESG views?
By Sharon Kimathi
Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital
sharon.kimathi@thomsonreuters.com
Hello!
As United States Vice President Kamala Harris is potentially poised to become the Democratic presidential nominee in the November election, we break down her views and actions related to some key environment, social and governance topics.
Harris, 59, who is Black and Asian American, is likely to fashion an entirely new dynamic, with Trump, 78, offering a vivid generational and cultural contrast.
She outlined a series of policies she promised to pursue including signing laws to protect abortion rights and ban assault rifles and said she would make rebuilding the middle class the focus of her potential presidency.
The AFL-CIO labor union federation, which represents 12.5 million workers, said it had also endorsed Harris to replace President Joe Biden.
Her climate history
Harris’ climate and energy positions are similar to President Biden’s. Throughout her career she has made clear that clean energy and environmental justice are priorities.
When Biden announced Harris as his running mate in the 2020 race, he emphasized her tough stance against big oil when she served in key roles in California, noting lawsuits she had launched both as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and then as the state's attorney general until January 2017, when she became a U.S. senator.
As California attorney general, Harris won multimillion-dollar settlements against oil majors Chevron and BP over alleged pollution violations from underground fuel storage tanks.
She is a proponent of the Biden administration's strategy to expand offshore wind energy and other renewables with lease auctions and subsidies, in contrast to Trump, a fossil fuel supporter who has criticized offshore wind and other clean energy technologies.
Last year, Harris made her debut at international climate negotiations, announcing a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund and making her first major international speech focused on climate.
As vice president, Harris has also been involved in Environmental Protection Agency policy rollouts that tackled long-standing environmental justice issues, such as a multibillion-dollar program to replace lead pipes and lead paint around the country.
Friendly with tech execs
As a candidate for California attorney general, Harris reportedly assured potential donors that she was “a capitalist.”
She has generally been seen as cozy with prominent tech executives and investors, the local industry in her home Bay Area. She attended the wedding of Sean Parker, an early Facebook executive. Her brother-in-law, Tony West, is the chief legal officer for Uber.
She also accepted donations from Reid Hoffman, a prominent venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkedIn, as well as billionaire John Doerr and venture capitalist Ron Conway.
Big tech executives also supported her, including Sheryl Sandberg, then chief operating officer of Facebook, and Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce.
Welcome in Wall Street
Harris was known to be tough on big banks as California Attorney General. She walked away from talks in 2011 between large banks and state attorneys general over a settlement that would require lenders to help consumers hurt by home foreclosures and predatory lending practices.
Banks later more than quadrupled the money promised to help Californians reduce the amount they owed on their mortgages.
Under Harris, California launched a criminal investigation into Wells Fargo in 2016 in connection with allegations the bank opened millions of unauthorized customer accounts and credit cards.
Several major Wall Street names are reported to be supportive of Harris.
A source familiar with the matter said that Peter Orszag and Ray McGuire at Lazard would back Harris, confirming a Semafor report that said several Wall Street donors said they were preparing to contribute to Harris’ campaign. Those expected to contribute also included Blair Effron at Centerview, Jonathan Gray at Blackstone, and Roger Altman at Evercore, Semafor said.
Talking Points
Racial discrimination: The Illinois State Police released video of a white deputy sheriff killing Sonya Massey, a Black woman, in her home this month, revealing details of a shooting that some likened to high-profile cases in which law enforcement has used excessive force on Black Americans. Click here for the full Reuters report.
Bangladesh is expected to formally accept on Tuesday a court ruling to cut quotas for government jobs, media said, meeting a key demand of students whose protests sparked one of the worst outbreaks of violence in years that killed almost 150 people.
International governance: The United Nations' highest court said that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and settlements there are illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible, in its strongest findings to date on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Click here for the full article.
Britain's Environment Agency lambasted the country's water companies for spewing sewage into rivers and seas, saying the majority of them were failing to get the basics right, as it outlined plans for a tougher regulatory approach.
The U.S. National Labor Relations Board dropped its appeal of a judge's ruling striking down a rule that would have treated many companies as employers of certain contract and franchise workers and require them to bargain with unions representing them.
Humanitarian crisis: Civilians in Sudan have suffered horrendous levels of violence during more than a year of conflict between the army and a rival paramilitary force, facing repeated attacks, abuse and exploitation by both sides, the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders - MSF) said.
In Conversation
Cassie Lau, economics and finance professor at the University of Wisconsin, shares her thoughts on the United States Supreme Court ruling that overturned a legal precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws:
“Like Joni Mitchell, I’ve seen both sides now. Having worked through the enactment of Sarbanes Oxley and the 2008 financial crisis, and I also researched and taught finance, I firmly believe that we need a more informed approach to regulation.
“The Supreme Court Justices, while steeped in legal precedents, can’t possibly be experts on all disciplines, especially as our economy has become more specialized and the impact on the environment more important.
“As a society, we should be performing cost/benefit analysis of how we operate now, then find more environmentally sound methods of production and consumption.
“We explored converting a home in Longmont to Net Zero in spring finance case study class, realizing along the way how much data and scientific knowledge was needed.
“Most of us did not know what a heat pump was when we started, no less how it fit into the fuel needs of a home in Colorado. More education, analysis of facts, rather than not proselytizing on one side or the other should improve the sustainability of the globe.”
ESG Spotlight
Today’s spotlight shines a light on new sustainable lifestyle techniques from Cuba to Japan, as the Caribbean country embraces electric scooters while the East Asian nation experiments with climate friendly sake brewing methods.
Havana is famed for the colorful vintage cars that can still be seen puttering around its streets and are a popular subject for visitors' photographs.
But these days, Cubans are just as likely to be found getting around quickly and quietly on electric scooters made with Chinese parts.
"Electric motorcycles are solving a lot of problems in Cuba, they are already used for almost everything," explains Omar Cortina, a Cuban hotel worker who recently purchased his first electric vehicle - a lime-green scooter powered by a lithium battery.
Over in Japan,crammed into a narrow four-storey building in Tokyo, the small-batch operation at Tokyo Port Brewing employs methods that promise to help the sake industry resist the fallout of climate change.
A burbling vat of fermenting sake housing bacteria in a 670-liter (147-gallon) tank will take more than two weeks to turn its contents of rice and water into Japan's traditional alcoholic drink.
But they are not only alive, they are listening too, said brewer Yoshimi Terasawa, and the type of music coming from a loudspeaker below the tank determines how the spirit will taste.
"The micro-organisms inside are activated by the vibrations, and the taste changes," said the 63-year-old chief brewer of Tokyo Port Brewing.
Today’s Sustainable Switch was edited by Emelia Sithole-Matarise
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