Climate Monitor: July 15th
New Facebook ads from Amazon-backed Climate Pledge and new AJP ads from smaller climate groups
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 over a dozen groups and corporations from the past week, as well as their activities on social media.
Here’s what we found:
Best performing Facebook post from DCC members: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
Top ad spenders: Exxon, Volvo, NRDC, API, and EDF
Overall, spending by climate groups declined from the previous week to last week, largely due to NRDC and the NRDC Action Fund slowing down their American Jobs Plan Facebook ad campaigns. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil sharply increased their Facebook ad spending over the past week, dumping nearly $68k on a handful of data-collecting ads that attempt to reinforce the idea that oil and gas “are the backbone of our economy.”
Below are the top 25 spenders on climate and energy-related Facebook ads last week.
Competitive Enterprise Institute soared on Facebook thanks to government regulation misinformation
The top three performing climate/energy related post across all of Facebook last week were:
Among climate and polluter pages specifically, the Competitive Enterprise Institute - made the most-engaged post last week among climate and skeptic Facebook pages we’re tracking. They used some hand-waving math in an apparent effort to convince voters that the “cost of federal regulations” is exorbitantly large by comparing said “cost” to how much the U.S spends on things like aircraft carriers and the total cost of the 2020 elections.
Here are the top 10 posts from climate and polluter groups on Facebook last week and the # of interactions each post received:
Here are the top 10 posts from climate and polluter groups on Instagram last week and the # of interactions each post received:
Triplecheck: "To insure or not to insure"
Analysts at Triplecheck found that at least 8 million people were exposed to climate misinformation on Twitter over the past week:
The usual climate denial content got a significant boost this week when a number of accounts (many of them with bot-like characteristics) resurfaced an insane interview that John Coleman, the co-founder of the Weather Channel, did with CNN in 2014 stating that climate change was not real. The interview was circulated without noting that it was seven years old, that Coleman is dead, or that the Weather Channel disavowed his statements at the time. At least 2 million human users were exposed to that content this week.
Steve Milloy of Junk Science tweeted out a picture of the private jets in Sun Valley for an annual conference hosted by the investment bank Allen & Company, stating that it was hypocritical for attendees to fly in private planes to discuss climate change solutions. About 3.8 million users saw that content on Twitter, and a Breitbart article with the same content was shared more than 1,400 times on Facebook.
Amazon-backed sustainability group launches huge Facebook ad campaign
It seems that now that The Climate Pledge has gotten over 100 signatories, it’s launched a Facebook ad campaign promoting the initiative and some of the biggest brands that have signed on. They’ve put young people - and young people of color in particular - at the center of their ads, having them challenge CEOs to do more to combat climate change.
One video ad starts with two young girls standing in floodwater:
“Dear CEO: What’s it going to take for you to do something? Do you even care? Climate change affects all of us. This is your chance to do something good.”
Green New Deal Network joins American Jobs Plan climate push
The Green New Deal Network, Conservation Hawks, and the Alliance for Climate Education are also using Facebook ads to pressure lawmakers into including robust climate and clean energy policy in the upcoming infrastructure bill, spending nearly $15k altogether in the past month on the platform.
That’s it for Climate Monitor this week. As always, log in 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 ClimateMonitor@DCC.org.