Kamala Harris had a message for voters last night: Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere. And environmentalists are … mostly OK with it, writes Robin Bravender. “The most important thing we need to do for the climate is make sure we defeat Donald Trump, and I think Kamala Harris is running a damn good campaign,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, told Robin. The outcome of November’s election could prove critical for determining whether the country curbs its climate pollution enough to help keep warming below unsafe levels. Climate-change-fueled disasters are already wreaking havoc on the nation — from a record hot summer to an estimated $92.9 billion in disaster damage last year — and scientists say the window to act is closing. Trump has pledged to roll back Biden’s climate policies, open millions of acres of pristine land to oil drilling and withdraw the country from the Paris climate agreement as he did in 2017. While Harris advocated for fossil fuel production to reduce reliance on foreign oil, she acknowledged that climate change is “very real” and worked to establish herself as Trump’s energy foil, mocking his climate denial and conspiratorial energy claims. (“He will talk about how windmills cause cancer,” she said). Harris’ policy platform pledges to “unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis” and hold polluters “accountable,” but she has yet to say whether she would pursue any specific climate efforts that differ from Biden’s. Still, some climate groups say the Democratic nominee is risking support from young voters by not staking out a stronger position and plan to tackle climate change. “If you’re going to call it an existential threat, you shouldn’t brag about increasing production of the thing that causes it,” Michael Greenberg, founder of the climate activist group Climate Defiance, told Robin. Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Benjamin Storrow breaks down how a federal program under the Inflation Reduction Act that encourages rural utilities to use cleaner power could transform America’s energy consumption. In an unusually blunt statement, Germany’s foreign ministry blasted Trump for the former president’s debate remarks claiming that Germany regretted its decision to transition to clean energy, write Seb Starcevic, Gabriel Gavin and Jürgen Klöckner. “Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50 percent renewables. And we are shutting down — not building — coal and nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest,” the ministry wrote on X. “PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs,” the statement added, in reference to Trump’s widely debunked claim that undocumented immigrants ate people’s pets in Ohio. Dwindling disaster aid isn’t swaying House Republicans House Speaker Mike Johnson canceled a planned vote on a conservative-backed government funding bill amid Republican opposition. Democrats have been critical of the proposal, which lacks funding for disaster aid as a storm barrels toward the Gulf Coast, writes Andres Picon. Federal disaster relief programs are due to run out of money in less than three weeks. Google has agreed to pay a little-known startup $10 million in advance to remove 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2034. The White House has come out in opposition to a Republican-led bill that it says would burden Americans with higher taxes while undermining efforts to fight global warming. The Interior Department’s notoriously clunky program to track oil and gas activity on public lands has cost the agency millions of dollars in lost productivity, a new report found. That’s it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.