2024 Democratic platform emphasizes economic case for climate action

The 2024 Democratic Party platform makes a case for action against climate change as economic populism, a sharp contrast to Republican arguments that it would hurt the middle class.

The platform’s fourth chapter, which covers energy and environmental issues, calls the climate crisis “an existential threat to future generations who deserve better” caused by “delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in big oil.”

This section of the platform frontloads the economic argument, noting that the renewable energy industry has created hundreds of thousands of jobs already and citing Energy Department projections that Biden administration policies will cut electricity rates up to 9 percent by 2030. It also cites the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits for the purchase of new and used electric vehicles (EVs) and the expected savings from stricter fuel economy and tailpipe standards.

It strikes a similar note on polluters, tying future efforts to Vice President Harris’s pledge to take action against price gouging, stating “when we hear of potential collusion or price-gouging, we’ll hold oil and gas executives accountable.”

The platform also emphasizes policies around conservation and environmental justice, but the economic emphasis is both a continuation of Biden-era messaging and consistent with a broader message of economic populism that Harris has focused on since becoming the Democratic nominee.

Republicans and former President Trump have repeatedly attacked President Biden’s environmental policies as economically ruinous and blamed them for gas prices, even as oil production under the Biden administration has reached record highs. Trump has also frequently attacked electric cars in particular, although he was noncommittal about repealing the EV tax credit at a campaign stop Monday in Pennsylvania.

As president, Trump rolled back a number of Obama-era climate and environmental regulations and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Project 2025, a blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation for a future conservative presidency, includes numerous similar proposals. While Trump has disavowed parts of the document, many of its authors are former Trump officials, including former Bureau of Land Management official William Perry Pendley.