Climate Monitor: June 17th
Energy companies among the biggest online spenders in Maine, Colorado
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: The Years Project
Top ad spenders: Volvo, NRDC, API, LCV, ExxonMobil
While NRDC has certainly increased its spending on Facebook and Instagram ads over previous weeks, most of that money seems to be going toward a nationwide email acquisition campaign about removing all lead pipes from America’s water systems.
Their affiliated 501(c)4, the NRDC Action Fund, has also been spending heavily on Facebook recently. Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute’s Energy Citizens page ran ads arguing against raising taxes on the fossil fuel industry.
Below are the top 25 spenders on climate and energy-related Facebook ads last week.
Climate groups celebrate Keystone XL termination, protest G7 summit
During his first trip to Europe as president, Joe Biden told a crowd of U.S. soldiers stationed in England that global warming represented the “greatest threat facing America,” and the right-wing media ecosystem predictably took his warning in bad faith. And, while the Biden administration’s move to pull the plug on Keystone XL was critical to its final termination, conservation activists used the Group of Seven summit in Cornwall to protest the lack of bold, concrete commitments from the attending world leaders.
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:
Cleaning up after elephants
Analysts at triplecheck also picked up on the right-wing media’s spin on President Biden’s climate remarks in England, as well as a bizarre claim by Sean Hannity. Overall, they found that over 13 million people were exposed to climate misinformation last week.
“Sean Hannity picked up an Accuweather report stating that the United States had seen the lowest number of severe tornadoes in May since 1950, which had 2 million human views on Twitter and was shared more than 1,200 times on Facebook. What he didn’t mention was a recent Accuweather report warning that the tornado season was ‘just getting started’ and that the 180 tornados the United States saw in March ‘easily eclipsed the three-year monthly average of 82 tornados.’”
Clean energy Facebook ads dominate in Maine in fight over power corridor project
Overall, groups using ads promoting clean energy and/or conservation make up the majority of top spenders targeting Maine with Facebook and Instagram ads. Much of that spending was dedicated to promoting or arguing against a new power corridor in western Maine, with both sides using conservationist and/or pro-clean energy rhetoric.
One group’s campaign to keep oil and gas alive in Colorado
A fossil fuel industry-funded group called the Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development (CRED) has spent over $23,000 in the past month on Facebook and Instagram ads to make sure that Colorado remains a huge fossil fuel-producing state. In their most recent ads, they talk favorably about the state’s fossil fuel regulations and indicate a desire to preserve Colorado’s public lands.
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!
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