Last week's top climate posts: June 6 - 12
Right-wing outlets, climate activists respond to climate commitments at G7 meeting
For starters, here are the top 3️⃣ performing posts across Facebook in the United States last week mentioning “climate change” or “global warming.” Several of the most-engaged posts about climate change or global warming last week were about President Biden’s recent speech to American troops in England ahead of his first meeting with the Group of Seven. He warned that global warming represented the “greatest threat facing America,” but right-wing outlets and pundits predictably took his speech in bad faith.
Two of the top three Facebook posts last week about climate change or global warming were Fox News posts about the president’s speech, followed closely by similar bad-faith posts from Dan Bongino and Bill O’Reilly.
The top Facebook post about climate change or global warming from non-right-wing pages last week came from NPR, featuring a story about the termination of Keystone XL, which many climate groups also posted about to high engagement rates last week - more on that below.
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:
Among pages that we’re tracking, five of the top 10 most-engaged posts on Facebook came from climate groups celebrating the termination of Keystone XL and the conclusion of the decade-long fight to stop the project. Another two celebrated other climate victories in the Biden administration, including the reversal of a Trump-era decision to allow road construction in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
Meanwhile, on Instagram, the top post from groups we’re tracking came from Extinction Rebellion. With Biden and other world leaders on their home turf for the G7 meeting, they took the opportunity to make dramatic demonstrations pushing for aggressive climate and conservation commitments from the group of nations instead of the pleasant platitudes that the institution typically offers. Greenpeace USA had a similar notion, and they brought a 15-foot-tall plastic waste sculpture to the White House to push Biden to take global action on plastic pollution.