The herd of independent minds has stampeded in on Kamala Harris’s VP pick, including those obsessed with person-made climate change. The New York Times says “Tim Walz Has Championed Climate as Governor/ Kamala Harris’s V.P. pick, known for his folksy persona and rural Midwestern roots, has elevated the issue of climate change in his state.” And Scientific American, or Political Science American or whatever it’s now called, says “Tim Walz Has a Strong Record on Climate Change/ Minnesota governor Tim Walz will promote climate action as Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick, experts say”. Experts, no less. As in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Also Inside Climate News, which chortled “Climate Advocates Rally Behind Walz as Harris’ VP Pick”. ABC boldly chose “Climate advocacy groups call Harris-Walz pairing a ‘winning ticket on climate’/ Walz has supported major climate legislation in Minnesota.” Oh, and for bad measure the New York Times “Climate Forward”, the same day as the story cited above, puffed “Tim Walz’s big climate ambitions”.

So are we meant to think Joe Biden and what’s-her-name, his VP, didn’t have big climate ambitions? As the Babylon Bee put it, across a range of policies including this one, “‘I Will Fix Things If You Vote Me Into Office,’ Says Woman Currently In Office”. And what about Barack Obama? Didn’t he have “big climate ambitions”? Being, after all, the guy who said on clinching the 2008 Democratic nomination that “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” (He also said “I face this challenge with profound humility” so not everything a politician says is necessarily credible.) Was he not serious? Or did he um not actually know how to change the planet’s weather?

Some mud-sticks have argued that someone as progressive as Kamala Harris picking someone else progressive as her running mate might be more popular inside the echo chamber than out. Others have said that it isn’t a huge deal who you pick for VP even if you win, let alone otherwise. For instance try to name Hillary Clinton’s running mate, or Walter Mondale’s… or for that matter Jimmy Carter’s. Not to mention Calvin Coolidge’s, or Woodrow Wilson’s.

Also, at the risk of igniting controversy we do want to mention that Roger Pielke Jr. recently published a chart, under the heading “Joe Biden is the ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ President”, showing that U.S. oil production on federal lands was far higher under Biden than Trump. And four more charts showing just how well the American hydrocarbon fuel industry did between 2020 and 2024.

As Pielke Jr. comments:

“I would guess that we are going to hear the phrase ‘drill, baby, drill’ a lot in the next three months. Here at THB, one goal is to ensure that whatever our politics or views on policy, that we work hard to share a common understanding (or at least a shared understanding of disagreement) of what available evidence says and does not say.”

But Roger, “experts say”. So we don’t need no stinkin’ evidence.