Industry groups run online campaigns against climate action in Colorado, Washington
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:
The American Petroleum Institute is spending big in Colorado to kill state legislation that would increase regulation for air pollution. Another industry-backed group is running ads against Washington’s Cap & Invest program
Outdoors giant Patagonia continues to run ads on Snapchat partnering with local and national environmental groups on campaigns for protecting public lands and against fossil fuels
Climate Power is running Facebook ads attacking Congressional Republicans’ plan to kill last year’s landmark climate legislation in exchange for raising the debt ceiling
Right-wing accounts and pages continued to attack electric vehicles, defend gas stoves, and generally spread climate denial on Facebook
Digital Advertising Roundup
Facebook + Instagram 👍
For starters, here were the top 25 climate and energy-related advertisers on Facebook and Instagram last week:
The American Petroleum Institute, via its Energy Citizens Facebook page, was the highest-spending advertiser in the energy and environmental space last week. The bulk of its $60k spent was targeting Colorado with ads aimed at killing state legislation to regulate clean air. Here’s an explainer on the fight over Colorado HB 1294.
On a much smaller scale, API has also begun running this ad targeting Louisiana.
Meanwhile, in Washington state, a group called Affordable Fuel Washington is attacking that state’s “Cap & Trade” system as too costly for residents. The organization is bankrolled by the oil & gas lobby, and spent just shy of $15k on these ads last week. If you’re unfamiliar, here’s a recent read from NBC on the state’s new “Cap & Invest” program.
On the national level, you’re going to start hearing a lot more about the debt ceiling crisis currently enveloping Washington, DC. That’s because Congressional Republicans are seeking to repeal last year’s climate legislation in order to vote for the U.S. to pay its debts. Climate Power is up with new ads on Facebook educating Americans on that fact, targeting users nationwide:
…and one last advertiser on Facebook ads we should note is the American Gas Association, which spent around $8,000 last week defending gas stoves.
Google & YouTube 🎞️
The only major climate or energy-related political advertiser on Google that was archived last week was: Clean Air Task Force Action ($3,300), which ended its recent ad campaign on methane pollution on May 5th.
Although its ads are not archived, we found that Affordable Fuel Washington (mentioned above) is also running Google Search ads around “Cap & Trade”:
Snapchat 🤳
Outdoors giant Patagonia continues to be one of the only climate-related advertisers on Snapchat this year. The company regularly partners with local or national advocacy groups on its ad campaigns, most recently Earthjustice, Outdoor Alliance, and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (to name just a few). Patagonia has spent $35,380 on these types of ads in 2023:
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 11,900 public posts on Facebook mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 547,000 interactions. Engagement on these posts was generally lower than the previous week.
The top post mentioning climate or energy topics came from video game culture site IGN, which shared a post about actor Jason Momoa’s thoughts on combating climate change.
A handful of right-wing, anti-climate posts received moderate engagement last week. They included this one from PragerU, this from FOX News, and this from Marjorie Taylor Greene. A DeSantis video attacking “woke ESG” also performed highly, as did this post from liberal page The Other 98% attacking Republicans’ fossil fuel ties.
Meanwhile, 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 feed posts on Instagram mentioned climate or energy issues, and they earned a cumulative 4.1 million interactions.
Some of the top-performing posts last week included this post from Leo DiCaprio about glacial melt and this one from the Babylon Bee mockingly tying gas stoves to the January 6th insurrection.
…and just like the previous week, climate skeptic TikToks continue to spread on that app, despite the company’s declared policy to remove them. This video attacking electric cars as a means of “government control” and surveillance has 700,000 views.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Testing Spotlight: Floridians worry
From Phys.org: An increasing number of Floridians agree that human actions are causing climate change, including a record number of Florida Republicans, according to a new survey from Florida Atlantic University…
…Virtually all respondents (90 percent) believe climate change is happening, with 65 percent attributing the causes to human actions, including 49 percent of GOP voters. This belief is leading to concern for the future: 61 percent of Floridians are moderately-to-extremely concerned about flooding worsening due to climate change, and 68 percent are moderately-to-extremely concerned about hurricanes worsening due to climate change.
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>>
Brands still funding climate denial videos, despite YouTube’s promises to demonetize (The Drum, 5/9)
How Tucker Carlson was a terrible and effective megaphone for climate misinformation (MMFA, 5/3)
Elon Musk claims threat of climate change is 'overblown (Mail, 5/5)
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