SEATTLE — Vice President Kamala Harris, in Seattle on Tuesday, said we are seeing the effects of climate change “in real time,” while touting the massive investments the Biden administration has made in clean energy to combat its most severe impacts.
Harris’ speech, at a South Seattle design and construction firm, was timed to mark the anniversary of the administration’s landmark climate legislation.
“Every day around the world the impact of the climate crisis is stark and it is vivid,” she said to a couple of hundred invited guests at the South Seattle headquarters of McKinstry. “Here in Washington state you have endured deadly heat waves and devastating wildfires.”
With President Joe Biden and Harris ramping up their 2024 reelection campaign, the vice president’s Seattle visit also included a motorcade-escorted stopover to speak at a pricey political fundraiser at a Medina mansion.
At McKinstry, Harris spoke of communities across the country “choked by drought, washed out by flood and decimated by hurricanes,” and of the burning of the town of Lahaina on Maui.
“It is clear the clock is not just ticking, it is banging,” Harris said.
The law, the Inflation Reduction Act, makes the largest federal investment in history to battle climate change, around $375 billion over a decade in direct funding, tax credits and loans for clean-energy technology, energy-efficiency projects and air-pollution controls.
Harris said the law has helped create more than 175,000 new clean-energy jobs across the country in the past year, doing things like building solar panels, installing new high-voltage transmission lines and replacing gas furnaces with electric heat pumps.
She spoke for a little under 15 minutes before touring McKinstry, a green construction firm that has benefited from the law’s tax credits. The Seattle facility produces sheet metal projects, HVAC equipment and plumbing systems and has about 800 employees, said Ash Awad, McKinstry president and chief marketing officer.
Then-Sen. Barack Obama toured the same McKinstry facility in 2008, during his first campaign for president.
Speaking before Harris, a series of Democratic officials sang the climate law’s praises, while emphasizing that there was more work to do.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the law’s tax credits can be up to 70% of a clean-energy project’s cost, if it meets thresholds like paying prevailing wages, using registered apprentices, using American-made components or being located in a low-income community.
Companies have announced $110 billion of clean-energy projects in the last year in the U.S., Granholm said.
“We are the irresistible nation for clean-energy investment,” she said.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, whose own presidential campaign four years ago was focused on battling climate change, cited recent flooding and the wildfires on Maui.
“This is not your grandmother’s climate change,” he said. “This is a new beast.”
The law, paid for by new taxes on big businesses and increased IRS enforcement on the wealthy, also extends subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, caps prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients and allows Medicare, for the first time, to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.
Biden aims for the U.S. to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Granholm said the federal government must work with states to reach that goal. The Inflation Reduction Act is anticipated to bring an estimated $5.3 billion in investments in clean-power generation and storage to Washington by 2030.
After several failed attempts to put a price on carbon, Washington state in 2021 passed a program that puts a cap, or limit, on statewide emissions, and requires the largest-polluting businesses to purchase permits to cover the greenhouse gases they emit.
Costs have been passed along to consumers, helping to give Washington among the highest gas prices in the nation in recent months, averaging $5.03 a gallon, second only to California, according to AAA. Harris did not mention the state’s gas prices but did talk up the Biden administration’s efforts to help working people save money on energy costs with tax credits and subsidies for better windows and insulation.
Washington’s cap on statewide greenhouse gas emissions is a kind of insurance that various sectors will work to reduce their emissions, said David Mendoza, The Nature Conservancy’s director of government relations. The investments from the Inflation Reduction Act can complement the revenue raised in Washington’s carbon auctions to help ease the cost for consumers and companies to move away from fossil fuels.
Now the problem is getting the state’s dollars in the hands of people who can’t afford to make transitions like replacing their gas furnace with a heat pump.
“We’re advocating at the state level especially,” Mendoza said. “How can we simplify these processes to get the money out the door quicker and faster?”
After the event at McKinstry, Harris attended a private fundraiser at the Medina home of Beth McCaw and her husband, Yahn Bernier. Harris praised the approximately 50 people, a majority of them women, who’d paid $5,000 or more to attend (with hosts contributing up to $50,000).
The fundraiser was co-hosted by Microsoft President Brad Smith, who said he’d known Harris even before her election as California’s attorney general.
Harris greeted those she called “long-standing friends” and “some new friends” among the donors in the room and said their support had been vital in defeating then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
“I dare say and I proudly say — and it is not an exaggeration — we have achieved transformational work on a number of levels,” Harris said.
She touted changes capping the cost of insulin and prescription drugs for older adults on Medicare and for getting the government the long-sought ability to negotiate for better drug prices.
Harris slammed Republicans and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court for overturning abortion rights protections and moving to punish women who seek abortions and health care providers that provide them.
Harris appealed to the donors to redouble their support for 2024, accusing Republicans of efforts to harm democracy by making voting more difficult in key states.
“What’s at stake right now is our country, and by extension this election will have global impact,” she said.
Harris arrived Tuesday morning on Air Force Two at Boeing Field with second gentleman Doug Emhoff. She was met on the tarmac by Inslee, Lt. Gov. Denny Heck, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, King County Executive Dow Constantine and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, among others. Constantine and Harrell snapped photos.
Harris was last in Seattle about 10 months ago, also touting clean technology and fitting in a fundraiser. In that, her first visit to Seattle as vice president, she promoted nearly $1 billion in funding for school districts to upgrade to electric school buses, part of the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in late 2021.
The Seattle Department of Transportation warned of traffic delays around midday Tuesday, as the Secret Service has the authority to close streets and highways for security reasons.
