In this 2024 election, as in any election season, all of the candidates are throwing elbows at each other jockeying for camera time to pronounce what their agenda will be should they be elected — except Kamala Harris, who manages to be an Olympic-level master of talking a lot without saying anything. But she has tried to spin herself as a climate, fossil-fuel moderate, backing away from her earlier positions on things like banning fracking.
But when politicians start blowing smoke up our fourth points of contact in the course of their campaigns, it's important to watch what they do, and not just what they say. So let's take a look at one Camila Thorndike, the Harris-Walz campaign's climate engagement director — whatever a climate engagement director is. At any rate, Thorndike's record on energy issues couldn't be farther from moderate — and she would be helping set energy policy in any possible Harris/Walz administration.
During an August 2022 podcast interview, Camila Thorndike—who worked at green energy advocacy firm Rewiring America before she joined Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign last month—called on "anyone who is in the fossil fuel sector to consider putting their talents elsewhere" and stop "continuing to cook the planet." It was far from Thorndike's first broadside on the industry's workers. Months earlier, in May 2022, she accused the oil and gas industry of "ecoterrorism." And in March 2021, she called on her followers to "overcome" the "individualism, white supremacy + toxic patriarchy" that oil and gas companies "weaponize."
How "moderate" is that? These are her positions, in her own words. She claims that oil and gas companies "weaponize" the nebulously defined concepts of "individualism, white supremacy + toxic masculinity."
What. A. Kook. And now she's working for Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris gets elected, she will be helping to determine energy policy. And since when was individualism a bad thing, anyway? But she's certainly not down with Harris 2.0's more moderate tone on energy.
While Thorndike's past comments reflect the views of left-wing climate activists, they stand in contrast to the more moderate approach Harris has taken on energy in the final weeks before the election—particularly in Pennsylvania, the crucial swing state home to tens of thousands of oil and gas workers. They also shed light on the kind of personnel who could staff up a potential Harris administration.
So, the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont was right; Kamala Harris is saying whatever she thinks she needs to in order to win the election. The woman is utterly without any pretense of integrity, or principles, or anything else that we'd like to see in an elected official. The fact that she hires people like this speaks much more loudly as to her intentions than does the woman herself.
But wait! There's more!
Thorndike, who did not respond to a request for comment, has dubbed oil and gas companies "evil" because they routinely turn a sizable profit.
"To have that level of money flowing to so few CEOs and shareholders, there is something evil about that. There is something that is—a system that's like so unequal and so callous to human suffering," she said during her August 2022 interview with the My Climate Journey podcast. "I would challenge anyone who is in the fossil fuel sector to consider putting their talents elsewhere because, to my mind, there's no greater source of harm than continuing to cook the planet, which we've known for decades."
What. A. Kook. And now she's working for Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris gets elected, she will be helping to determine energy policy. I can't emphasize this enough.
Forget what Kamala Harris is saying. Look at who she's hiring — in this case, someone who is an unrepentant climate scold, a fanatical anti-child, anti-energy, anti-modern lifestyle (except for herself, we feel sure) lunatic.
See Related: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Gets Schooled Over Her Remarks on Climate Change, Hurricanes
Key campaign workers like this frequently go on to take related positions in the staff of election winners when they assume office. There can be little doubt that a Harris administration would include Camila Thorndike, almost certainly in some position having to do with energy and climate policy. She would be pushing policies that would make energy more expensive, and in so doing make everything more expensive; she would be pushing policies that would damage, if not destroy, our modern technological lifestyle.
If you need any more reasons to cast your vote against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, Camila Thorndike should be all the reason you need.
