Bill Gates is all in on clean hydrogen – and he wants everyone else to be too
A roundup of the climate conversation across social media this week
Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly, data-driven report on the digital strategies polluters and pro-Climate groups are using to shift public opinion and move legislation. Here’s what we found:
Toplines:
Bill Gates and Breakthrough Energy network are running nationwide digital ads calling clean hydrogen a “Swiss Army knife” and urging further investment into it to mitigate the climate crisis.
The Almond Board of California is looking to use online ads to change up almond farming’s anti-environment reputation.
On Facebook and Instagram, Democrats are really, really excited about the Biden administration’s investments in the offshore wind industry.
And speaking of the Biden administration, Glenn Beck spent 10 minutes ranting about why he thinks President Biden and VP Harris are trying to reduce the population to mitigate climate change in a viral Facebook video.
Digital Advertising Roundup
Facebook + Instagram 👍
For starters, here were the top 25 climate and energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week:
The top two spenders on digital ads in the climate and energy space continue to be oil giant Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, which is the largest trade association for the oil and natural gas industry.
One new and notable ad campaign this week came from Bill Gates’ personal Facebook page. These ads ran on Facebook and Instagram across the nation, and they feature a message from Gates touting the Breakthrough Energy network (which Gates founded) and their work to provide clean, cheap hydrogen power.
Another notable, new ad campaign comes from the Almond Board of California. Growing almonds is, of course, notoriously brutal on the environment - but these ads, which ran mostly in California on Facebook and Instagram, seek to promote ways almond farmers are providing environmental benefits to California.
Outdoor recreation and retail giant REI is also running a new campaign. The company’s ads, which are running on Facebook and Instagram nationwide, promote REI’s initiative to ensure that the 100 million Americans who don’t have easy access to green space can still get outside.
In addition, the Center for Biological Diversity is running some very sad ads on Facebook and Instagram nationwide featuring cute pictures of manatees and wolves paired with the information that human activities are killing many of them – these are paired with links to specific petitions to put a stop to it.
And finally, in a similar vein, Defenders of Wildlife is running new fundraising ads nationwide on Facebook and Instagram featuring cute pictures of bears and wolves and urging people to donate to protect animals at risk of extinction.
Google & YouTube 🎞️
There were no new or noteworthy climate or energy advertisers archived by Google last week.
Snapchat 🤳
There were no new climate-related ads on Snapchat this week.
What’s Trending on Social Media
How are climate and energy issues being discussed by Americans on social media? Every week, we conduct a robust keyword search using CrowdTangle for general terms like “climate change,” “global warming,” “fossil fuels,” and over 40 more specific topics (like “electric vehicles,” “gas stoves” and “pipelines”). Here were the 15 top-performing public posts (by # of interactions) related to climate and energy on Facebook last week:
Last week, over 11,700 public Facebook posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 619,900 interactions.
Unlike the last few weeks, the week was a big one for Democrats and pro-climate accounts on Facebook. Joe Biden and The White House, along with some major Dem accounts like Occupy Democrats, touted victories in investing in the offshore wind industry and in creating more clean energy manufacturing jobs. Also, shout out to the Biden photographer for capturing a President’s climate message in maybe the most succinct way possible!
However, posts from popular conservative commentators containing climate misinformation also garnered a lot of interactions on Facebook this week. Glenn Beck made claims that the Biden administration wants to address the climate crisis by reducing the population, and Matt Walsh made a joke that seems to allege that someone attacked a Pfizer facility and blamed the damage on climate change.
And finally, Fox News’ Facebook page got a lot of engagement on… this.
Here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels and Stories) related to climate and energy on Instagram last week:
Last week, over 6,100 public Instagram feed posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 5.1 million interactions.
This week on Instagram, the top three climate-related posts (in order) came from @joerogan about a favorite topic amongst conservatives, the BirthStrikers, then @pubity about the climate protestors who spray painted a super yacht in Ibiza, and finally @bbcnews about a new study that suggests eating less meat could be a solution to the climate crisis.
Weekly Reading
Want to go deeper? Here’s a quick roundup of news from the past week at the intersection of climate, digital strategy, and advocacy.
P.S. Are you signed up for Climate Nexus’ daily newsletter, Hot News? It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need to know in the climate and environmental policy space. Subscribe here>>
The ocean in Florida is actually the temperature of a hot tub right now (AP, 7/26)
How the right-wing media is distorting public understanding of extreme heat and wet-bulb temperatures (Media Matters for America, 7/21)
A British nonprofit is making waves after dropping Barclay’s due to their funding of oil and gas projects (Bloomberg, 7/25)
Lawyer Missy Sims is suing Big Oil on behalf of 16 Puerto Rican municipalities (NYT, 7/19)
That’s it for this week! If you enjoyed reading this week’s issue, feel free to forward it to a friend or colleague.
Climate Monitor is a product of the Digital Climate Coalition + FWIW Media. Tips/comments/questions? Email kyle@fwiwmedia.com
I made some comments on Substack's Anthropocene Weekly an excellent newsletter by Sam Matey in which I advocated for negative population growth (say, down to about a billion worldwide) as a true solution to resource depletion, energy consumption etc.). Glenn Beck is a profoundly misguided soul and talent and if he gave thought about it, he might advocate for it as well! But he won't more's the pity.