New climate ads target moms and Mormons
Plus, a second GOP group calls on Manchin to block clean energy
Welcome to Climate Monitor, your weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies that polluters and climate-action groups are deploying online to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Google by several dozen groups and corporations from the past week, as well as their activities on social media. Tell your colleagues to subscribe here!
TL;DR:
NRDC and the Union of Concerned Scientists have both launched Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns calling on the EPA to enforce stricter heavy truck pollution standards.
Climate Power launched new Facebook and Instagram ads pinning high gas prices on Big Oil, as well as using veteran testimonials to claim clean energy investment as a national security priority.
Science Moms has launched their biggest digital ad campaign of the year so far, promoting a three-point “to-do list” moms can use to act on climate change.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby ran a Facebook ad campaign in Utah arguing that conservation is a conservative principle (at the same time that Utah Democrats endorsed independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin.)
BP America is once again running digital ads claiming that it supports methane emission regulations.
The top-performing climate or energy post on Facebook last week came from Markets Insider.
National Digital Ad Spending on Climate
First, here are the top 25 spenders nationwide on climate and energy-related ads on Meta platforms from last week:
Last week, NRDC and the Union of Concerned Scientists launched a Meta ad campaign calling on the EPA to curb pollution from heavy diesel trucks. NRDC is also running ads promoting its lawsuit against the USPS for failing to purchase electric vehicles for its new postal fleet.
At the same time, Climate Power launched a few new nationwide digital ad campaigns. The first continues to pin rising gas prices on the greed of Big Oil, while another tries to turn the industry’s talking points against them by arguing that “the transition to American-made clean energy is fundamental to our national security.”
We also identified a couple new campaigns that are more geotargeted. Science Moms dropped over $20k on a new campaign targeting women in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. They’re promoting a “to-do list” with actionable items that moms can take on to support clean energy and fight climate change. Additionally, Citizens’ Climate Lobby ran a campaign last week targeting young adults in Utah calling on the state, and especially Brigham Young students, to make their state a center of conservative climate action. This campaign ran at around the same time as the Utah Democratic Party endorsed Evan McMullin’s independent run for U.S. Senate.
When it comes to polluters, we found that BP has spent at least $42k on a new Facebook ad campaign targeting adults aged 25 - 44, once again pushing the idea that the fossil fuel company supports methane emission regulations. A couple fossil fuel-aligned groups also recently ended ongoing Meta ad campaigns: Power the Future spent $17k lauding Sen. Joe Manchin for fighting “Biden’s bureaucrats” who “tried to stop American pipelines.” And, an API-connected group called Great Lakes, Michigan Jobs spent up to $30k on a Meta ad campaign warning that closing Line 5 “would increase Michigan’s spend $2.2 billion per year. We can’t afford that. Tell regulators to build the Great Lakes Tunnel.”
Overall, here’s a look at how weekly spending on Meta political ads by climate groups and polluters compares week-over-week so far this year:
Google + YouTube
We identified five climate and energy groups that ran political ads on Google platforms last week, according to the Google Transparency Report. Here’s how their spending breaks down:
Each of these groups’ investments in Google political ads last week went toward ongoing campaigns from previous weeks, but overall spending by them has declined. Additionally, it looks like the League of Conservation Voters has stopped running their YouTube campaign supporting Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Snapchat
Patagonia continues to be the most prolific investor in Snapchat political ads among pro-environment groups, spending nearly $20k on the platform last week, launching nine new campaigns. These range from environmental job openings, community organizing, raising awareness about radioactive waste, and protecting wolves.
Overall, here’s a breakdown of how much has been spent on climate, clean energy, and environmental ads on Snapchat so far this year.
Climate & energy ads in the 2022 elections
Out of some of the most competitive races across the country, we picked up a few new and ongoing Facebook ad campaigns from some of the top candidates:
IL-6: As part of his latest digital fundraising push Sean Casten emphasized the benefits of clean energy: “ As a scientist and a clean energy businessman, I know we’ve got to invest in renewables to lower energy costs and get away from relying on countries like Russia for oil.”
NE-2: In an email acquisition ad, Don Bacon blames President Biden for high gas prices: “Americans are paying the price at the pump for Biden’s energy incompetence. We think it’s time to reinvest in American energy.”
OR-6: Matt West, continuing his climate-focused campaign, ran a video ad about how he has to wear a mask when he walks his dog because of wildfire smoke: “CLIMATE CRISIS ALERT! This is what happens when bought-and-paid-for politicians obstruct progress on climate change.”
TX-28: Jessica Cisneros attacked Rep. Henry Cuellar for his support from Manchin and Big Oil in a new fundraising ad: “The climate crisis is getting worse by the day. Henry Cuellar takes thousands of dollars in contributions from Big Oil over the best interests of South Texas, and has even earned the title of ‘Big Oil’s Favorite Democrat.’”
Reaching Frontline Communities
Amidst a paid digital push by fossil fuel groups to reinforce preferences for gas stovetops, Energy Boom has now launched a new phase of their Facebook + Instagram #BreakUpWithGas ad campaign. They appear to be targeting members of the AAPI community with ads encouraging them to “tell your aunties and elders about the dangers of gas and encourage them to make the switch to electric.” They’re also running ads promoting the idea that they don’t need gas to make their favorite dishes.
Tracking Climate Disinfo Online
Triplecheck identified approximately 330 tweets with more than 10 retweets and 80 Facebook posts with more than 10 engagements that contained misinformation or toxic narratives related to the environment from April 26, 2022 through May 02, 2022. More than 10 million people were exposed to this content on Twitter during the time period reviewed, an increase from last week's exposure levels. The content had over 15,000 engagements on Facebook, an decrease from last week's exposure levels.
Approximately 90 percent of the people exposed to misinformation or toxic narratives related to the environment on Twitter were exposed to one of the following themes:
Woke people with money should be the ones to donate to fight climate change
9,500,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter
Minimal Facebook engagement identified.
Biden cares more about climate activists than he does about Americans
1,500,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter
Over 4,100 engagements on Facebook.
Opposition to the Green New Deal
520,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter
Over 2,900 engagements on Facebook.
These narratives were also the focus of approximately 70 percent of the Facebook engagements. You can find the full report here.
Measuring the National Organic Conversation
On Facebook last week, the highest-performing posts related to climate change and energy mostly concerned Russian oil and a possible EU embargo. Occupy Democrats shared a post from the Democratic Party, giving it an additional 31k interactions. However, we did find that Breitbart wrote about last week’s self-immolation outside the Supreme Court, and a right-wing meme page called 911 Supply earned 22k interactions on a post that argued that EVs are not zero-emission vehicles because they’re still powered by dirty energy.
Over on Instagram, we found that very few posts, if any, earned significant levels of engagement last week. Two of the best-performing posts related to climate change last week came from entrepreneur Jeremy Jauncey, who used his platform to highlight the impacts of climate change and local actions to combat it in the Philippines. Additionally, it looks like Bosch found some success on the platform last week with a pair of posts promoting their sustainability research.
While not counted in the chart below, we would still like to note that most of the highly-engaged English-language posts about climate change came from South Asian accounts. First, a meeting between Elon Musk and an Indonesian delegation of government and corporate officials in Austin generated a significant level of engagement among Indonesian users. Secondly, the brutal heatwave blistering much of the Indian subcontinent was the subject of several highly engaged posts from English-language accounts in India with huge followings. Almost every post connected the heatwave to climate change.
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, head to climatemonitor.substack.com to see these updates in real-time as we publish them throughout the week!
And if you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop us a line by shooting an email to nick@fwiwmedia.com.