Big Oil spent millions opposing ballot measures in SoCal. It may have worked.
Chevron and Aera flooded Ventura County with ads to thwart ballot measures that would have restricted new fossil fuel developments
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:
After a Chevron- and Aera Energy-backed group spent $270k on digital ads and millions more on TV ads opposing two Ventura County, CA measures that would restrict new oil and gas developments, both measures appear to have failed.
An opaque pro-clean energy group that supported the Clean Energy Jobs Act in Illinois last year, Affordable Energy Future, is now running Meta ads opposing a series of clean energy bills in New York State EDF Action is running ads in Colorado, West Virginia, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona urging the states’ Democratic senators to invest in clean energy.
New ads from the Carbon Neutral Coalition and The Williams Companies paint oil and natural gas as essential to our energy future.
Judd Legum’s Popular Information published a piece today covering the flaws of ESG funds.
National Digital Ad Spending on Climate
Meta
First, here are the top 25 spenders nationwide on climate and energy-related ads on Meta platforms from last week:
Spending by climate groups and polluters on Meta both declined last week, though the former still outspent the latter on the platform by roughly 2:1. All the same, we identified two new interesting campaigns from climate groups. The first is from a relatively new group called Affordable Energy Future, which ran a digital ad campaign supporting the Clean Energy Jobs Act in Illinois last year. Last week, they spent nearly $25k on Meta ads opposing a slate of bills in New York State (S6453C, S8384, S9426, A1466D, and A10484) that mostly deal with who owns and benefits from new renewable energy projects in the state, arguing that greedy utilities would “slow down our clean energy future.”
Secondly, we found that EDF Action has spent at least $10.5k so far on an ad campaign targeting the Democratic senators of Colorado, West Virginia, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. The ad campaign highlights local energy leaders’ calls for Congress to invest more heavily in clean energy.
Among polluters and their allies, the Carbon Neutral Coalition just started running a campaign in Texas arguing against the Green New Deal, saying that “Using smart technologies and policies, we can clean the environment while creating new jobs and products from Texas oil and gas. Their most recent ad joins one of their ads from early May featuring fossil fuel operative Chuck McConnell (who bears no personal relation to Mitch as far as we can tell) arguing that “the mission is to eliminate emissions. Not to eliminate energy choices.”
We also found that last week, The Williams Companies spent $2,950 on Meta ads selling the idea that “Williams' natural gas infrastructure network is well-positioned to fuel the clean energy future.” These latest ads are mostly targeted at young adults in North Carolina, New York, and Texas.
Google + YouTube
In the run-up to Tuesday’s elections in California, VC-SAFE, a nonprofit supported by Patagonia and Advocacy Action Fund, has spent $22,800 on this YouTube ad over the past three weeks. It argues that neighborhoods with more oil and gas developments “face some of the highest pollution face some of the highest pollution levels in California, resulting in asthma, cancer, and low birthweights in newborn babies.”
By contrast, the Chevron- and Aera-backed group has spent $104,600 on the platform and $165,415 on Meta ads since late March opposing the measures in both English and Spanish. They primarily argued that the ballot measures would make the county reliant on “costly foreign oil.”
Elsewhere, Conservation MN Voter Center spent $3,200 last week on new YouTube ads that either praise DFL lawmakers for supporting clean energy investments or attacking GOP lawmakers for refusing to act on climate change.
Snapchat
There were no new Snap ad campaigns from climate groups last week, but we did find that the New Mexico Outdoor Recreation Division is running a small PSA-style campaign this month. They’re advertising the state’s new “Outdoor Equity Fund” to enable NM youth to “enjoy their fundamental human rights to access the outdoors.”
Overall, here’s how much has been spent on the platform this year on related ads:
Climate & Energy Ads in the 2022 Elections
Out of some of the most competitive races across the country, we picked a few new or ongoing Facebook ad campaigns from some of the top candidates:
GA-SEN: Herschel Walker is continuing to use high gas prices as one of his main attack lines against Sen. Raphael Warnock: “Warnock supports Biden 96 percent of the time, and votes with Chuck Schumer 99 percent of the time. Warnock supports crippling energy regulations, doubling gas prices, and driving up prices of the groceries we buy.”
ME-02: Facing moderate Rep. Jared Golden, Republican Bruce Poliquin stated in a new ad that, “People are worried not just about inflation right now - gas costs, food costs - but they are worried about next winter's home heating costs. With Joe Biden's energy policies, and people like Jared Golden backing him up, it is no wonder.”
NV-01: Primarying Rep. Dina Titus, Amy Vilela stands next to Rep. Cori Bush in a new Meta ad campaign: “Las Vegas is the fastest growing and warming city in the US, we’re running out of water, and we’re running out of time. That’s why Amy Vilela’s running a 100% corporate-free campaign for #NV01. When elected, passing a #GreenNewDeal will be her top priority.”
NH-SEN: In what appears to be his first major ad, Republican Chuck Morse establishes a contrast between himself and Sen. Maggie Hassan: “Joe Biden and Maggie Hassan failed us…Chuck will…restore our energy independence and put America first.”
Reaching Frontline Communities
Since mid-May, a new app called Dashboard.Earth has been advertising its product to Los Angelenos. Much like EDF’s recent Meta ads, they’re selling themselves as a tool to “transform climate anxiety into climate action” through a variety of features in the app. The app’s development team has lofty goals, including “making LA seven degrees cooler” and “diverting 95% of all landfill waste,” but so far they’ve spent under $1k advertising their product on Meta.
Tracking Climate Disinfo Online
Triplecheck provided by VineSight identified approximately 300 tweets with more than 10 retweets, 85 Facebook posts with more than 10 engagements, and 210 Telegram posts with more than 1000 views that contained misinformation or toxic narratives related to the environment from May 31, 2022, through June 06, 2022. More than six million people were exposed to this content on Twitter during the period reviewed, a decrease of nine million from last week's exposure levels. The content had over 9,500 engagements on Facebook, a decrease of 7,500 from last week's exposure levels. The content had over 2,600,000 views on Telegram, a decrease of 600,000 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:
Al Gore claimed that everyone would die from global warming within twenty years
2,000,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter
Minimal Facebook engagement identified
Over 68,000 views on Telegram
High gas prices and utility bills are due to Biden’s environmental policies
3,200,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter
Over 2,200 engagements on Facebook
Over 59,000 views on Telegram
Environmentalists are hypocrites for flying private
1,500,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter
Over 830 engagements on Facebook
Over 54,000 views on Telegram.
These narratives were also the focus of approximately 55 percent of the Facebook engagements, as well as approximately 40 percent of Telegram views identified in our tracking. You can find the full report here.
Measuring the National Organic Conversation
On Facebook last week, some of the top posts mentioning energy, climate change, and related terms again came from Heather Cox Richardson. Additionally, Robert Reich got over 46k interactions on a post lauding Britain’s Conservatives for enacting a 25 percent windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies, and Green New Deal got nearly 32k interactions on a post lauding Germany for “slashing public transit fares by 90% to encourage people to ditch their cars and save energy amid high gas prices.” Lady Gaga and her cosmetics brand Hauslabs also made content that outperformed most content by pro-climate pages by launching a carbon-free product line.
We’ll also note that while there were very few highly engaged posts from climate deniers on Facebook last week, we did find that this article from Bitcoin Magazine sharply criticizing a proposed New York State moratorium on fossil fuel-driven crypto mining got nearly 19k interactions.
Overall, here’s how the most engaged content on Facebook mentioning climate, energy, and related terms breaks down:
On Instagram, the most highly engaged post that mentioned climate by far came from meme account beautythreadings with a post lamenting how “I’ll lose my thirties to the climate crisis.” Otherwise, pro-climate content didn’t get quite as much engagement as climate-denying content or brands’ sustainability campaigns, such as Bosch or Burberry. A post from Robert Reich highlighting the corruption from Big Oil in Congress got 69.3k interactions, while Mike Pence got over 105k interactions for posing as upset at a gas station. For those who share our grim curiosity, we regret to share that the comments on the former VP’s post are full of users blaming him for high gas prices because he “could’ve prevented this” instead of bucking Trump’s coup attempt.
Overall, here’s how the most engaged content on Instagram mentioning climate, energy, and related terms breaks down:
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop us a line by shooting an email to nick@fwiwmedia.com.