Vice presidential hopefuls JD Vance and Tim Walz will meet Tuesday, going head-to-head in their only scheduled debate in the presidential race.
The stakes will be high for energy and environment policy in next month’s election, which will decide the fate of President Joe Biden’s aggressive climate change and clean energy agenda, including the future of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The debate in New York City also comes days after Hurricane Helene brought historic floods, washouts and destruction to North Carolina and several other Southeast states. Recovery efforts are ongoing, but the storm and its aftermath have already become campaign fodder.
Climate change advocates are pushing for the CBS News moderators to ask climate questions and tie the issue to Helene.
Vance, the Republican Ohio senator running with former President Donald Trump, often discusses energy as an issue around reducing consumer costs, which have risen in recent years as the country has endured some of the highest inflation in decades. The pace of inflation has cooled in recent months to near-typical levels.
Vance also presents energy as a jobs issue, particularly in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state that could decide the election and has been at the center of the fracking boom of the last 15 years.
Walz, the Democratic Minnesota governor, has a lengthy history of climate action in his state, although he mainly talks about climate change in the context of cleaning up air and water pollution.
He echoes his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, who talks about the issues in broad terms, such as protecting American jobs and economic security.
“Hope is not a damn plan,” Walz said in a Pennsylvania speech. “We don’t hope we’re going to beat Donald Trump. We don’t hope that we’re going to tackle climate change. … [W]e create a plan to do it.”
As in past vice presidential debates, a significant part of the discussion and criticisms are likely to focus on the top of the ticket.
The matchup comes about three weeks after Harris and Trump had their sole debate, which focused in part on the IRA and Harris’ previous embrace of a nationwide fracking ban, which she has reversed on. The vice presidential debate is hosted by CBS News.
Hurricane politics
The cost to repair damages from Hurricane Helene could reach $34 billion, according to initial estimates from the financial data firm Moody’s. Biden has already issued disaster declarations for North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia.
That means the federal government will provide grants for some home repairs and loans for uninsured property losses in those states and help fund emergency work in their hardest-hit counties.
Biden on Monday said he was considering calling Congress back to pass disaster funding. At least 137 people have died across six states and hundreds remain unaccounted for, according to the Associated Press.
Trump’s campaign has offered prayers and some aid for those impacted by the storm — and criticism for the Biden administration’s recovery efforts.
At a Georgia speech Monday, Trump falsely claimed that the state’s Republican governor hadn’t been able to get in touch with Biden because the president was “sleeping.”
Both Biden and Gov. Brian Kemp (R) directly refuted that allegation. “He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying,” Biden said.
“The president just called me yesterday afternoon and I missed him and called him right back and he just said ‘Hey, what do you need?’” Kemp told reporters, noting that Georgia has the resources it requires to rebuild. “He offered, if there are other things we need, just to call him directly.”
Vance, meanwhile, has offered rhetorical support for disaster victims, while mostly opposing federal aid.
“Heartbroken by the devastation,” Vance wrote Saturday night in a post on X. “Please say a prayer for everyone affected by the storms.”
Since taking office in January 2023, Vance has opposed all but one appropriations package that he has voted on in the Senate. He skipped the most recent vote on a stopgap spending, which didn’t include additional disaster funding but does extend funding levels for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In the Democratic-controlled Senate, such compromise bills typically pass with universal support from Democrats and roughly half of the Republican conference.
In some cases, Vance said he opposed the appropriations bills because they included funding for the war in Ukraine, which he argues U.S. taxpayers should not be subsidizing.
Parker Magid, a spokesperson for Vance, noted that the senator would be “happy to consider” a standalone disaster relief bill for Helene.
Vance also pushed a bipartisan rail safety bill following the 2023 train derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, though that bill has stalled amid GOP and industry complaints. Trump and Republicans seized on the disaster to accuse Democrats and Biden of being insensitive to conservative areas.
Walz has dealt more directly with disasters. As Minnesota governor since 2019, he’s overseen the recovery efforts from seven presidentially declared natural disasters.
He most recently dealt with disaster recovery this summer when flooding brought about by historically heavy rain inundated vast swaths of his state and caused significant damage.
He pointed to that experience, while acknowledging Helene’s much larger scale, in brief remarks to reporters Monday.
“Right now, our hearts are just breaking. This situation is still incredibly dangerous and unfolding,” Walz said in Michigan.
More than a dozen environmental and climate change groups, including the League of Conservation Voters, NRDC Action Fund and Evergreen Action, wrote to CBS News moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell urging them to ask the candidates about the storm and climate.
“The choice before voters could not be more stark: Will we continue to combat the climate crisis and invest in clean energy, turbocharging American manufacturing while giving families more affordable and reliable energy choices? Or will we reject climate science in the face of catastrophe, stifle America’s booming clean energy economy, and allow Big Oil to pollute and profiteer without constraint or competition,” they wrote in their open letter.
Drill, baby, drill
Vance, like Trump, is pushing for a major rollback of environmental policies and a boost to domestic fossil fuel production, in the name of “energy independence,” a theme he could push in the debate.
The idea is meant to denounce the policies from Biden and Harris as a risk to national security.
“When Donald Trump is president, we are going to drill, baby, drill, and bring back the great American energy economy,” Vance said in a recent Pennsylvania campaign speech.
“And Kamala Harris, she is the candidate of not buying oil and gas from Americans and Pennsylvanians,” Vance continued. “Kamala Harris wants us to buy energy from every tinpot dictator all over the world. Kamala, we say ‘No way, we’re going to buy it from our own people, right here in the state of Pennsylvania.’”
Vance and Trump argue that the United States is less energy independent than when Trump was president. But U.S. oil and natural gas production have increased consistently since Biden took office and are at record levels, a fact Harris has increasingly pointed out.
Republicans also accuse Harris and Walz of supporting a ban on fracking. Harris did support a ban in 2019, but has since reversed herself. Walz has never supported a ban.
While a president would not be able to unilaterally impose such a ban, he or she could float regulations to stifle drilling and production.
“She recognizes how unpopular her record is, so she’s running away from it every chance she gets,” Vance said at another recent Pennsylvania rally. “She’s on camera saying she wanted to ban fracking, but now she’s saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it.’”
Electric vehicles
Electric vehicles are another major point of contention in the race. The Biden administration has spearheaded a suite of policies to encourage EV adoption, like revamping the tax credits for buying them and writing an EPA tailpipe emissions rule that could lead to up to 56 percent of new cars sold in 2032 being all electric.
Harris and Walz back those policies, but Trump has promised to undo them, arguing the vehicles are inferior, expensive and the policy benefits China.
“Kamala Harris is trying to make us buy more and more Chinese-made electric vehicles,” Vance said at a recent Michigan rally. “Let’s buy more cars in Michigan, not in some foreign country,” he continued.
“Think about how little sense this makes,” Vance said later in response to a reporter’s question. “We’re going to tax American citizens and give a bunch of money away to rich people to buy electric cars made in China. It’s the dumbest economic policy in the history of this country, and we’ve done a lot of stupid things over the last 40 years.”
In the Senate, Vance introduced legislation, S. 2962, that would repeal the tax credits for EVs — which have strict sourcing requirements — and enact a $7,500 tax credit for U.S.-made vehicles fueled with gasoline or diesel.
Walz’s climate record
While Walz has not talked about energy and the environment on the campaign trail much, he has a significant record on the issues from his time as Minnesota governor and a member of the U.S. House. That experience could be an asset or a liability.
Most notably, Walz pushed through legislation in the state that sets the goal to get 100 percent of the state’s electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040. He did it while Democrats had just a one-seat majority in the Legislature.
Walz also got policies through including hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize electric vehicles and heat pumps, and to set energy benchmark for state-owned buildings.
The progressive record was a contrast from Walz’s time in Congress, when he represented a rural, heavily agricultural district. He had a far more centrist record there, supporting legislation to permit the Keystone XL pipeline and to expand oil and natural gas drilling to pay for infrastructure projects.
