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(Bloomberg) — Among the Democrats touting the party’s record confronting climate change at their Chicago convention, there was a major exception: Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris and other prime-time speakers, including running mate Tim Walz, largely shied away from highlighting green accomplishments made by the current White House — even the hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions in planned projects tied to those policies. 

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The importance of taming global warming registered only as a passing reference as Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night. 

Among the freedoms at stake in November’s election are those “to breathe clean air and drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis,” Harris said.

The decision to largely skate over the climate issue — and a surge in clean energy investment that may prove among the most enduring achievements of President Joe Biden’s administration — frustrated advocacy groups looking for clearer signals of Harris’ intentions. 

“Harris’ extremely brief mention of climate change” during her speech “capped a week in which the climate crisis was shockingly absent in Chicago,” said Collin Rees, political director at Oil Change US, which advocates for a faster transition away from fossil fuels. “We need concrete, specific commitments.” 

For the presidential nominee, the decision to stay largely silent may be a strategic one. While climate activism could energize young voters, it also risks alienating potential supporters in the gas-rich swing state of Pennsylvania, said Kevin Book, managing director of the Washington consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. 

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Opponent Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked Harris’ approach to fossil fuels, telling a crowd in York, Pennsylvania, earlier this week that if she’s elected, energy prices will “quadruple,” and the US won’t produce “a drop of oil.”

During her short-lived 2019 presidential campaign, Harris called for a ban on fracking, the technique used to produce most US onshore oil and gas. Harris’ presidential campaign has said she wouldn’t ban the practice and insists Trump’s claims “are an obvious attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.”

As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to secure Senate passage of the sweeping tax-and-climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, while the Biden-Harris administration has also imposed regulations throttling greenhouse gas emissions. 

Ahead of Harris’ speech during the Chicago convention’s final night, organizers had devoted a 13-minute segment to climate issues. “An American president must lead the world in tackling climate change,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told the audience. “Kamala Harris understands that assignment.”

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Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida emphasized Harris’ green credentials, including her history taking on large oil producers as California attorney general.  

Harris and Biden “have proven that tackling this crisis creates jobs, that investing in clean energy protects our health and that investing in mass public transit builds strong communities,” Frost said. “Fighting the climate crisis is patriotic.”

Other environmental advocates aren’t worried climate change didn’t get top billing in Chicago. After all, Harris has yet to unveil detailed plans for a range of issues, and the prime-time programming at the DNC was intended to help introduce her and Walz to the nation, rather than delve into specifics. 

The convention stage isn’t the forum for fine details, said RL Miller, a delegate from California and president of Climate Hawks Vote Political Action, which supports candidates committed to strong action on global warming. 

“This is a place for Democratic enthusiasm,” she said. “Not policy nerds.”

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