Harris campaign climate engagement director Camila Thorndike (X)

The Harris-Walz campaign's climate engagement director has a long history of demonizing fossil fuels, going as far as to accuse oil and gas workers of committing "ecoterrorism" and advancing "individualism, white supremacy + toxic patriarchy," a Washington Free Beacon review found.

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."

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.

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."

At the time of those comments, Thorndike was Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I., Vt.) legislative assistant. While she was in that position, Sanders introduced the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which would levy a 95 percent tax on corporate windfall profits and raise $31.9 billion from three of the largest oil companies alone. The activist group Center for Biological Diversity said the bill would help combat the "climate emergency."

In October 2022, Thorndike announced she had joined Rewiring America as its director of policy programs. "Onwards with the clean energy revolution. Down with the fossil dictators and oligarchs. Let’s electrify everything," she wrote in an X post at the time.

Rewiring America is a relatively new group—it was founded four years ago to "help mobilize America to address climate change and jump-start the economy by electrifying everything." But it has already established an influential role guiding climate policy on Capitol Hill. The group spearheaded efforts to ban gas stoves, was featured in White House electric vehicle initiatives, participated in a White House electrification event, and was listed as a Department of Energy partner in the agency's energy efficiency efforts.

Thorndike has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric about climate change. In 2022, she said the fossil fuel industry served as an effective method of birth control because she and others wouldn't have children to protect them from climate change.

"A world in which my kids wouldn’t die young is the reason I became a climate activist 16 years ago," Thorndike wrote in a May 2022 post. "The fossil fuel industry’s ecoterrorism is still great birth control."

"It’s coming partly from a place of love for my hypothetical child," she told the Washington Post in an interview months later. "I want to protect them from suffering. Not that life is ever free from suffering, but … what of the joys and peace and goodness that make me happiest to be alive will be accessible in 20, 30, 40 years?"

A year earlier, Thorndike delivered remarks at an event hosted by Harvard University's environment and natural resources program, which she later said was "about political and cultural change to overcome the individualism, white supremacy + toxic patriarchy that fossil fuel co’s weaponize against affordable solutions we already have for rapid decarbonization."

In an X post later in 2021, she said that the "fossil fuel industry is a death cult."

Thorndike's past rhetoric does not align with Harris's rhetoric on the campaign trail as she runs to defeat former president Donald Trump.

Harris has backed off her previous support for the Green New Deal (she was an original cosponsor of the bill in 2019), said she wouldn't ban fracking (as she pledged to do during her first presidential campaign), and has boasted about record oil production in the United States.

In an interview with Politico this week, Thorndike said Harris remains committed to fighting climate change and doesn't support an "expansion" of fossil fuel drilling.

In addition to her roles at Rewiring America and in Sanders's Senate office, Thorndike previously worked for the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, cofounded the youth advocacy group Our Climate, was a campaigner for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and had roles with activist organizations Climate XChange and Sunrise Movement.

Thorndike also helped produce a national musical about the dangers of fossil fuels. The production, titled, Firerock: A Musical of Awakening, uses "myth, story, songs and community making" to convey "the enormity of climate change" and "foster the spiritual healing, heart-felt connection, and inspiration for long-term engagement."

The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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