Hillary Clinton secured the endorsement of a major environmental group this week, when the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund endorsed her as “the right person for the job.” LCV’s support carries significant weight in the environmental community, but the development has also reignited a debate within that community over whether Clinton’s approach to climate change is sufficiently aggressive—particularly in contrast to her chief rival Bernie Sanders, who among other things has promised to cut off fossil fuel development on federal lands.

Clinton has steadily made overtures to environmentalists in recent months, staking out positions on grassroots issues like the now-dead Keystone XL pipeline, oil drilling in the Arctic, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This week, she’s emphasizing her stimulus plan for coal communities hurt by the U.S.’s transition to wind, solar, and natural gas. Over the summer and fall, she announced parts of her climate plan, including a modernized infrastructure plan and clean-energy initiative to scale up solar and renewable energy to 33 percent of electricity by 2027. In coming months, her campaign may release additional specifics on her energy policies.

But as the contrast with Sanders suggests, she’s neglected a few of the more politically sensitive issues. Unlike the Vermont senator, for instance, Clinton has suggested that fossil fuel development should continue on federal lands, instead offering to reform the rates companies pay to drill and mine on them.



A few weeks ago, I sat down with Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, to discuss these issues, as well as the larger context of this policy debate—including a global conference kicking off at the end of the month in Paris, which environmentalists hope will be an existential turning point on fighting global warming. (Full disclosure: I worked with Podesta from 2011 to 2013, when he was an executive at the Center for American Progress and I was a reporter for its news website, ThinkProgress.)

Podesta previously served as senior adviser to President Barack Obama, and in that capacity helped lay the groundwork for many of the administration’s environmental initiatives, including a recent, watershed climate deal with China. Journalists and activists have interpreted his high-level role in Clinton’s campaign as an indication that she would make climate change a central focus.