Kamala Harris campaign flip-flops on fracking again

The Kamala Harris campaign has flip-flopped once again on fracking, with a key official admitting the vice president is not advocating its expansion.Harris’ struggles balancing her climate activism with a shift to the center on energy threaten her chances in Pennsylvania, where former President Donald Trump is pulling ahead in some polling.Fracking is a hot-button issue in the must-win Keystone State, where it supports around 123,000 jobs and was led to more than $41 billion in 2022 economic activity, according to the energy economists at FTI Consulting.In a recent interview, Politico asked Harris’ climate engagement director Camila Thorndike how the campaign balances Harris’ recent statements in favor of fracking with the campaign’s rhetoric against climate change.“Just to be clear, Vice President Harris hasn’t said anything that the administration hasn’t already said.

She is not promoting expansion,” said Thorndike.“And so voters who care about climate change understand that she is someone that not only movements can work with, but she has championed these causes, and that we know who she is.”Thorndike’s remarks on fracking complicate Harris’ latest statements, as the Vice President said in the debate that she “was the tie-breaking vote on the inflation reduction act, which opened new leases for fracking.”  These remarks were a reversal of her previous calls to ban fracking.Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, involves injecting liquid into the earth to create cracks that open up previously inaccessible oil reserves.Sarah Phillips, a petroleum engineer and prominent fracking advocate in the Pittsburgh area, told The Post that fracking is the only way to reach the oil reserves.“Our shale here is less permeable than cement.

It’s impossible to get to if we don’t frack.So it would decimate our entire industry if we didn’t frack,” said Phillips.Greg Kozera, a native of the Pittsburgh area who worked in the natural gas indus...