Climate change to get its moment in the sun at Democratic convention on Thursday

Climate and energy policy will be featured on the final night of the Democratic National Convention.

Before Vice President Harris speaks Thursday, the evening’s event is expected to include videos and speakers to highlight climate policy from the Biden administration and discuss job creation. The scheduled programming was shared with NPR by a source familiar with the planning who is not authorized to speak publicly.

The featured speakers include Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is the first Native American to be tapped in to lead that department, Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, and John Russell, who is among the content creators at the convention. Russell, who has more than 180,000 followers on TikTok, is expected to talk about his home of West Virginia and the benefits of the “clean energy economy.”

Although climate change was not a major focus over the first three nights of the convention, it did come up in several speeches. The planned attention to the issue Thursday signals Democrats see climate and energy as something to campaign on.

“Climate was not a campaign issue eight or 12 years ago. It was extremely difficult to get climate into one of the major debates, it was seen as a peripheral and not a central issue,” said Manish Bapna, president of the NRDC Action Fund.

“What we have seen is climate change is a kitchen table issue because it is about cost of energy, it is about jobs, creating a more dynamic economy, confronting extreme weather. So we are seeing climate as part of the mainstream conversation,” Bapna explained.

Earlier this week, a coalition of climate groups announced a $55 million advertising campaign supporting Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket.

The LCV Victory fund, the EDF action Votes,