Unearthed campaign contributions worry environmentalists about major candidate: 'A dangerous step backward'

Environmentalists are raising concerns about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's pick for vice president after examining Ohio Senator JD Vance's history of prioritizing dirty energy interests. 

What's happening?

On July 16, the Guardian reported that Vance has accepted more than $340,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry since 2019, according to nonprofit OpenSecrets. He is one of the "top industry benefactors" at this point in the 2024 election cycle.   

"The selection of JD Vance as a potential vice president is a dangerous step backward for climate action in the United States," Fossil Free Media's Make Polluters Pay campaign spokesperson Cassidy DiPaola told the Guardian. "Senator Vance's record shows a clear pattern of prioritizing fossil fuel interests over the urgent need to address the climate crisis."

Stevie O'Hanlon, the communication director for the environmental justice group Sunrise Movement, also expressed concerns to the Guardian over Vance's reversal on climate issues after previously advocating for clean energy initiatives. 

Moreover, Vance has appeared to downplay how humans have contributed to rising global temperatures, telling the American Leadership Forum that he was "skeptical" that changing temperatures were caused "purely by man," according to the Guardian, which is a common straw-man argument intended to mislead, since no climate scientist is saying the planet's climate changes exclusively from human actions.

What an incredible 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers have agreed on, though, is that humans are "mainly" responsible for the extreme rate at which the planet has been overheating in global average temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, worsening in recent decades.  

In August 2023, Vance advocated for increasing oil production across the Utica Shale, suggesting in The Marietta Times that the solution to providing "cheap and reliable power" is to support dirty energy projects like new pipelines and refineries. 

The Ohio senator also called for incentivizing U.S.-made gas-powered vehicles and co-sponsored a bill that would hinder the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing a pollution-reducing vehicle standard.

Environmentalists are worried that if Vance serves as vice president, he will be more empowered to roll back planet-friendly policies that have benefited Americans. 

Why is this concerning?

While Earth's climate has changed in cycles throughout its existence, as NASA notes, more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed studies agree that human activities are primarily to blame for the accelerated warming following the preindustrial era, according to the Cornell Chronicle. 

Major players in the dirty energy industry are on the same page, acknowledging (at least internally) the harm their pollution has caused, per reporting from Heated.  

Internal documents from a Senate hearing titled "Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil's Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change" reveal that dirty energy companies spent millions to influence universities, allegedly working to hide their knowledge from the public and investors about the impacts of their polluting fuels on our planet. 

According to Our World in Data, one study estimates that 8.7 million premature deaths in 2018 (around one-fifth of total deaths) were associated with the burning of dirty fuels — which account for more than 75% of human-generated planet-warming gases, per the United Nations.   

Rising global temperatures have also contributed to food shortages and price hikes, displacement from more intense extreme weather events, and the spread of disease. 

How can I support climate causes?

If you're curious about which causes your representatives are officially advocating for, BillTrack50 and Congress.gov are tools that can help you track legislation. 

You can also help hold corporations accountable for their practices by supporting brands working to be more eco-friendly, whether by forgoing plastic packaging or by incorporating recycled materials into their products.

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