The Democrats are the party of climate change action. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act included spending on renewable energy subsidies and climate-related measures of historic proportions – $US783 billion ($A1.2 trillion) worth, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

And when the legislation encountered a stalemate in the Senate, with the vote tied at 50-50, it was Vice President Kamala Harris who cast the tie-breaker to pass it into law.

Biden rejoiced that “today offers further proof that the soul of America is vibrant”.

Harris had long shared the vibe: “We cannot afford to be patient,” she said in 2021. “And we are determined to meet our goal of a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. We are absolutely determined to meet that goal. Again, we know that it is not something that is just a goal, it is an imperative.”

As she travelled the country this year announcing federal grants totalling $US20 billion for climate related projects, she told audiences: “When we invest in climate, we create jobs, we lower costs, and we invest in families.” So it’s an environmental imperative and an economic good, according to Harris.

But something seems to have changed in recent weeks. Since emerging as the Democrats’ candidate for the White House, Harris has mentioned climate change just twice in public, and both times only fleetingly.

First was in her speech formally accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. After promising to restore American women’s “reproductive freedom”, she said: “In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake … The freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”

That was it. Note that she didn’t pose climate change as a problem to be solved in its own right but as an incidental issue that could be addressed indirectly as a bonus benefit from cleaning the air. By contrast, in the 2020 campaign Biden had called climate change an “existential threat”.

Second was in Harris’ sole broadcast interview to date as the candidate. In her interview with CNN last week, she said: “I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate.”

Why did she see fit to make this remark? Because she’d just confirmed in the interview that she had dumped her earlier promise to ban fracking. Fracking is big business in the swing state of Pennsylvania. It’s potentially the difference between winning and losing.

But having conceded to the fracking industry, she felt the need to reassure the majority of the country that she was still committed to addressing climate change nonetheless.

So Harris mentions climate change sparingly, and only when she feels she must. The question, as a Bloomberg headline posed it a couple of weeks ago, is: “Harris doesn’t talk about climate change. Why?” Bloomberg’s columnist, Mark Gongloff, assumes that she’s simply trying to avoid alienating the pro-fracking Pennsylvanians, and he’s partly right.

But there’s more to it. When I asked a senior adviser to the Harris campaign, a person not authorised to speak on the record, the answer was: “Young people care about climate change, but they also care about rising inflation and the cost of living, and we have to make sure we are not seen as having an elite conversation.”

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“We have 20 to 30 frontliners in the House,” the adviser said, meaning incumbent Democrat members of the House of Representatives who are in danger of losing their seats in the November elections.

The party hopes to wrest back control of the House, which means they have to win a net extra five seats; they want to hold on to all their existing ones to maximise their chances.

“They can’t be answering questions on fracking every day.” So to avoid talking fracking, the Democrats are avoiding the larger question of climate altogether.

It’s a striking paradox; the worse the climate crisis gets, the less the party of climate action wants to talk about it.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

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