Vice President Kamala Harris has recently caught backlash after it was reported that she spent millions on private jet travel while making climate change a key part of her campaign in seeming hypocrisy. Since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 race in July, Harris’ campaign has traveled extensively, racking up roughly $3.8 million in travel costs alongside carbon emissions.
However, this appears to be at odds with Vice President Harris’s messaging, who has often claimed climate change is an “existential threat” to the world. Conservatives have often criticized prominent Democrats such as John Kerry and Taylor Swift for advocating for fighting climate change while they extensively utilize private jets.
Notably, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) claims private aviation is singlehandedly, “the most energy-intense form of air travel.” The NLM further added that it is “estimated to be on the order of 10 to 20 times higher than the average fuel use per passenger hour for a commercial flight.”
Past comments from Harris in 2019 highlight Harris’ stance on climate change, where she made it clear that she viewed the supposed phenomenon as an “existential threat to us as human beings” when speaking to CNN. Then-Senator Harris advocated for changing human “behaviors,” which evidently does not include her abandoning her private jet, to fight climate change.
“There’s no question we have to be practical. But being practical also recognizes that climate change is an existential threat to us as human beings,” she said. “Being practical recognizes that greenhouse gas emissions are threatening our air and threatening the planet and that it is well within our capacity as human beings to change our behaviors in a way that we can reduce its effects. That’s practical.”
During comments at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2023, Harris illustrated the supposed “urgency” of climate change, stressing that we are past-due for substantive action to be taken. The vice president suggested that “transformative” and “exponential” changes must be taken to mitigate the ensuing climate crisis she claims is happening.
“The urgency of this moment is clear. The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time. And we cannot afford to be incremental. We need transformative change and exponential impact. As nations, we must have the ambition that is necessary to meet this moment,” she said. “We must lead with courage and conviction, and we must treat the climate crisis as the existential threat that it truly is. It is, dare I say, our duty and our obligation. Not a choice.”
Harris has also spoken about “climate anxiety,” suggesting that people have gone so far as to not have children due to their fears of climate change. “I’ve heard young leaders talk with me about a term they’ve coined called ‘climate anxiety,’ which is fear of the future and the unknown of whether it makes sense for you to even think about having children, whether it makes sense for you to think about aspiring to buy a home,” Harris said during remarks at the “Fight for Our Freedoms” event in September 2023.
Watch Kamala Harris get called out over “unanswered questions”:
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