Grassroots groups launch digital campaigns to stop Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline
Plus, how one group is using YouTube ads to help boost Biden’s climate creds with Millennials
Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies polluters and climate-action groups use to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on social media platforms, as well as what’s trending on social media. Tell your colleagues to subscribe here!
TL;DR:
LCV Victory Fund and Climate Power Action spent nearly $100k on Meta ads promoting the Inflation Reduction Act and Democrats last week, while spending on the platform by other pro-climate groups declined significantly.
Half a dozen grassroots pro-climate groups launched digital ads last week opposing Joe Manchin’s permitting reform deal that would fast-track the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Their ads echo congressional progressives’ arguments that it was a “backroom deal.”
The American Petroleum Institute spent another $90k on GOTV ads last week, and BP America spent $31k on a new greenwashing digital ad campaign.
Over the past three weeks, Future Forward USA Action has spent nearly $400k on YouTube ads that primarily highlight the climate victories of the IRA to boost President Joe Biden’s standing with Millennials.
Despite the historic clean energy investments in the IRA, Republican congressional candidates are still attacking Democrats for not supporting “American energy independence” in their latest digital ads.
Right-wing pundits like TX Ag Commissioner Sid Miller and Breitbart are continuing to peddle misleading claims and news stories about electric vehicles across social media platforms.
National Digital Ad Spending on Climate
Facebook + Instagram
First, here are the top 25 spenders nationwide on climate and energy-related ads on Meta platforms from last week:
Last week, online ad spending by pro-climate groups declined significantly, as did their digital ad campaigns to promote the clean energy benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act. However, pro-IRA spending by these groups still dominates Facebook and Instagram ad spending compared to ads attacking the new law, as fossil fuel groups have yet to launch any significant anti-IRA campaigns. So for now, Climate Power Action and LCV Victory Fund are still the main drivers of Facebook ad messaging around America’s biggest-ever climate bill, and they’re continuing to advertise it as such to promote Democrats.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have now moved on to energy project permitting reform - particularly for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) - as they promised Sen. Joe Manchin they would in order to secure his support for the IRA. But, that doesn’t mean that progressives and climate activists are going to make it easy for him. Rep. Jared Huffman of California, himself an alumnus of NRDC, called the arrangement a “sleazy backroom deal,” language which has now made its way into digital ads opposing Manchin’s coveted fossil fuel pipeline.
In fact, we identified quite a few groups that launched anti-MVP digital ads last week, including Gas Leaks Action, The Years Project, Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, Appalachian Voices, 350, Action for the Climate Emergency, and Protect Our Water Heritage Rights. On top of calling out the political maneuver as a “secret pipeline deal,” some of these groups have used their ads to organize protests against the project and highlight the damage such a pipeline could cause to the Appalachian region. All told, we estimate that these groups spent nearly $9k in total on these Meta ads last week, primarily targeting VA and WV.
We also found a noticeable decline in Meta ad spending by fossil fuel groups, but even still we identified a campaign from BP America that pretty much only ran last week. Continuing their streak of using their digital ads to portray the company as sustainability-minded, they spent around $31k on a campaign primarily targeting Millenial men promoting a podcast series about how “the world's largest industries are transforming to reduce emissions”: energy, shipping, road transportation, finance, construction, and aviation.
Finally, we’ll note that the American Petroleum Institute is still running GOTV ads on Meta platforms, spending nearly $90k there last week.
Google + YouTube
LCV Victory Fund and Climate Power Action are continuing to also run YouTube ads promoting the Inflation Reduction Act to uplift Democrats, we’ve identified a third group spending a huge amount of money here: Future Forward USA Action. Over the past three weeks, this group alone has spent $390,700 on YouTube ads, particularly aiming to improve President Joe Biden’s standing among young voters for whom climate change is a top issue.
Overall, here’s how much these groups spent on Google political ads last week:
Snapchat
LCV Action Fund has now spent $21,353 on Snap ads promoting the Inflation Reduction Act, but we haven’t identified any other new ads on the platform supporting the new law. Meanwhile, Patagonia ran a brief campaign advocating for protecting Bristol Bay salmon in Alaska from mining pollution.
Overall, here’s how much has been spent on climate, clean energy, and conservation ads on Snap so far this year:
Climate & Energy Ads in the 2022 Elections
We identified several new digital ad campaigns about climate change and energy from battleground midterm campaigns across the country.
GA-SEN: Raphael Warnock is fully owning the clean energy victories of the Inflation Reduction Act: “Georgia is home to America’s largest solar panel manufacturer. How much energy is that? More energy than Marty needed to go back to the future. I’m Raphael Warnock and we’re making historic investments to fight climate change while helping create Georgia jobs.”
IL-17: Republican Esther Joy King launched a new negative ad against Democrat Eric Sorensen: “My climate activist opponent wants to spend your tax dollars on a plan that will increase gas prices. We simply can’t afford his agenda.”
NC-SEN: Ted Budd launched yet another ad advocating for fossil fuel production: “I’m running to make life better for North Carolina families. More American energy, not less.”
NY-11: Republican incumbent Nicole Malliotakis is tying high gas prices to Biden and the district’s previous representative, Democrat Max Rose, who’s running to get his seat back: “I support an American solution: restoring the energy independence that Joe Biden gave away.”
OH-09: Insurrectionist JR Majewski launched a new three-minute Trumpian ad: “Democrats are pushing unsustainable environmental ‘solutions’ that waste taxpayer dollars on useless government subsidies that are killing our jobs.”
OR-GOV: Democrat Tina Kotek is promoting a spot in Teen Vogue to young adults in Oregon: “When I was Speaker of the Oregon House, I put our state on a path to 100% clean electricity and passed a first-in-the-nation law to completely transition our state off of dirty coal-fired power.”
Reaching Frontline Communities
Diné (i.e. Navajo) grassroots group Tó Nizhóní Ání, or “Sacred Water Speaks,” has launched a Meta ad campaign to raise awareness about the restorative justice that has yet to fully take place in the Black Mesa region in northeast Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. After decades of effort, Diné and Hopi activists permanently closed the region to dirty energy generation, and, as their new digital ads highlight, they are now fighting to restore the region to its natural state and make the responsible mining companies atone for their decades of damage. Tó Nizhóní Ání spent $780 on these ads last week, which primarily target older adults in the American Southwest.
What’s trending organically?
Last week, the top Facebook post mentioning climate change, energy, or related terms came from The New York Times, which reported on how Californians could conserve power during last week’s brutal heat wave. We reported in last week’s Climate Monitor that online right-wing pundits took advantage of the situation to own the libs, and this post was no different. More than 80 percent of its 69k interactions were “Haha” reactions or disparaging comments like, “The difference is that in North Korea they don't turn the power off until 9 PM.”
We also found that skepticism toward electric vehicles was still pervasive on Facebook last week. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and GOP Rep. Lance Gooden of TX-05 pushed the nonsensical idea that “If electric vehicles were economical, they wouldn't have to be mandated,” getting 66k interactions in total. Additionally, a post from right-wing meme page F/U Deplorabes went relatively viral by pushing the persistent, misleading argument that EVs aren’t zero-emission vehicles because “only fractional amounts of energy are produced” by renewable sources.
Overall, here’s how the most engaged content on Facebook breaks down:
On Instagram, the top post came from Jeep, which announced an electric Recon model that will be available in 2024. Unlike on Facebook, where EVs seem to be reflexively met with intense skepticism, the reaction here seems to have been overwhelmingly positive. Other high-performing pro-climate Instagram posts last week came from Vogue Magazine, in which Jennifer Lawrence pushed for voting for climate action in this year’s midterms in a “no-hold’s-barred interview.”
On the right, dc_draino and Breitbart made relatively highly engaged posts by owning the libs and EVs. The former posited that, unlike California, “the Titanic had lights on when it sank,” while the latter reposted an ironic story from West Virginia, where coal miners helped push a dead EV to the nearest charger.
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.