How extreme or innovative climate solutions are seized upon by the far-Right online
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:
People often want to learn about + share innovative solutions for the climate crisis… but they’re also pretty afraid of them. And anti-climate posters online are quick to use that fear to spread misinformation and score political points online.
The Breakthrough Institute is running ads to promote nuclear energy in states with existing nuclear energy infrastructure.
Conservatives are pushing a false narrative that Greta Thunberg is in jail after disobeying Swedish police at a climate protest.
News of the record-breaking heat across the U.S. last week is making waves on Instagram.
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 in the climate and energy space – by a pretty wide margin – 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 came from The Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland-based environmental research center. They ran a series of Facebook ads calling for a switch to nuclear energy in New Jersey, Arizona, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. These seem to be targeted choices of states that have or are near nuclear energy infrastructure.
Outdoor retail giant REI also started running a new campaign this week. These ads are running nationwide on Facebook and Instagram, and they call on Congress to pass the E-BIKE Act, which was introduced to the House in March 2023 by Rep. Jimmy Panetta (CA-19) and creates a tax credit for electric bike users. REI, of course, sells e-bikes. 😂
…and finally, a group called Get Biofuel, which appears to be a subsidiary of the biofuel trade association Growth Energy, is running ads primarily in Minnesota and North Carolina that suggest using biofuel for road trips this summer and randomly feature Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson.
Google & YouTube 🎞️
There was one new or noteworthy climate or energy advertiser archived by Google last week: Conservation MN Voter Center ($17,600), which continued to run ads thanking state legislators for supporting clean energy.
Snapchat 🤳
There were no new climate-related ads on Snapchat this week.
🔦 Spotlight: Extreme climate ideas tend to go viral on social media… and not always in a good way
It’s no secret that climate change is impacting our daily lives – and it’s only getting worse. Last week alone, we saw the four hottest days on record in our planet’s history. It’s becoming increasingly clear that radical action will need to be taken if we’re going to protect ourselves from the worst effects of the climate crisis. And luckily, we have brilliant scientists, technologists, and researchers across the globe doing exactly that.
When some of these innovative ideas are shared online, they tend to go viral… and not always in a good way. It seems that when it comes to radical solutions for the climate crisis, people are of two minds: they want a silver bullet that will take care of the problem (and requires no effort from them) – but they are also really scared of ideas that seem too extreme.
And make no mistake: climate deniers are lurking, waiting to seize on this cognitive dissonance and fear and use it to blow things out of proportion, score political points, and spread misinformation. Here are some notable examples from the past few years:
“Blocking out the sun”
This is a far-fetched concept that went viral just last week. It stems from an announcement made in late June that the European Union will be “assess[ing] whether large-scale interventions such as deflecting the sun’s rays or changing the Earth’s weather patterns are viable options for fighting climate change.” The news was shared from popular current event accounts @rap and @pubity across Twitter and Instagram, where it collectively gained hundreds of thousands of impressions.
People, in general, were incredibly upset about the framing of the initiative – and quickly took to Twitter to criticize both the EU and the Biden Administration, who tentatively said they were open to the idea in early July. The most popular online comments include: “The UN, the EU, and every three-letter agency in the US need to be disbanded immediately” and a threat from someone on Twitter called Lady to sue everyone involved, which was met with hearty support.
“Liquid Trees”
If you were even remotely on the Internet this past March, you probably remember this next example: liquid trees. When @yupthatexists shared images of new urban photo-bioreactors that were designed to remove CO2 from urban environments, they amassed millions of views and became a highly divisive topic across the socials.
Some people were fans, citing the fact that the algae inside the tank were a smart way to make city air cleaner. But the overwhelming majority of commenters across Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook expressed a similar viewpoint: they only wanted real trees and were highly suspicious that any new variety – liquid or otherwise – would ultimately be used to supplant them.
“Human Composting”
Yet another example is a climate-mitigation idea that is actually not new at all. “Human composting” is an environmentally-friendly alternative to burial and cremation in which the body is buried in a vessel containing materials like straw to aid the natural decomposition process. It’s basically just the way people were buried for millennia before coffins became widely used… but as of right now, it has only recently become legal in six states.
Why only six? Because there are those who feel that human composting is disrespectful to the deceased – and that it disrupts the practice of some religious last rites. In March 2023, the U.S. Catholics Bishops Doctrine Committee released an official document banning human composting.
And this debate has found a home online. While there is no central viral post as of now – and it should be noted that a good amount of folks online feel positive about human composting – conservative figures like right-wing podcaster Tim Pool and a popular, conservative “DeSimp” account called George Wept have shared anti-human composting posts.
But Wait, There’s More…
Other recent examples of climate solutions that have made waves online include the Swedish charging road (and allegations that it causes cancer), the “Biden Burger Ban”, and the hysteria over New York pizza ovens this summer.
One thing is clear: people’s fears about the climate crisis take many forms – including fear of potential solutions themselves. And climate deniers are going to capitalize on that whenever they can to reframe and misconstrue the debate on their terms.
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 10,100 public Facebook posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 754,400 interactions.
This week was another big one for anti-climate posters on Facebook. Many of the top posts came from conservative “editorial” pages, which were focused on pushing a false narrative that Greta Thunberg was either going to or already in jail after she was charged with disobeying a police order to leave a climate protest in Malmo, Sweden. Thunberg is facing fines or prison time, with the former being far, far more likely… but this rumor has gained a whole lot of traction online with right-wing users.
On the Left, posts from the DNC and popular progressive commentator Brian Tyler Cohen about how our planet hit record-high temperatures *multiple* times last week also garnered a lot of attention.
And finally, the top two climate-related posts this week were actually pretty fun ones. The winner (by a lot) was an update from meteorologist and content creator Jennifer Broome about her trip to learn about climate initiatives in the Marshall Islands. This was followed by an enthusiastic meme from a popular meme account, Memehotep.
Here were the top-performing feed posts (excluding Reels and Stories) related to climate and energy on Instagram last week:
Last week, over 5,800 public Instagram feed posts mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 7.8 million interactions.
This week, the top three posts (as well as many of the other top posts) addressed the record-setting heat that occurred across the planet last week and came from popular current events accounts @pubity and @rap.
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>>
Iowa meteorologist faced major online backlash after talking about climate change and extreme weather on air (AP, 7/8)
California is launching a new campaign using advertisements, influencers, and community organizers to make sure people are prepared for the heat (NBC Bay Area, 7/11)
Leonardo DiCaprio is funding a climate education program at his old elementary school (Sacramento Bee, 7/12)
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