Potential trouble for the White House message on lower gas prices
Also inside: The digital advertisers competing to define new clean energy law in IL
Welcome to Climate Monitor, a weekly digest of the digital tactics and strategies that polluters and climate-action groups are using to shift public opinion and move legislation. We’ve examined political ad spending on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Google by several dozen groups and corporations from the past week, as well as what’s trending on social media. Tell your colleagues to subscribe here!
TL;DR:
Last night, Sens. Schumer and Manchin announced a deal on what they’re calling the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” - which supposedly contains significant spending related to combatting climate change. It’s too soon to track how that deal has played online just yet, but we will have much more in next week’s issue of Climate Monitor.
Science Moms and Third Way are continuing to spend heavily on Meta ads reaching users in key ‘22 states and districts with climate change and clean energy info.
Progress Michigan launched a new five-figure Meta ad campaign calling for the conservation of the Great Lakes and clean energy investments in rural areas.
Progressive group IL CleanJobs and utility Ameren are running Meta ads with competing messages about the impacts of the recently passed Climate and Equitable Jobs Act in Illinois.
While posts from The White House and President Joe Biden about slowly lowering gas prices are getting high levels of engagement, we found that much of it is in fact sharply negative engagement.
National Digital Ad Spending on Climate
Meta (Facebook + Instagram)
First, here are the top 25 spenders nationwide on climate and energy-related ads on Meta platforms from last week:
Once again, Science Moms was the highest-spending climate group last week when it comes to political ads on Facebook and Instagram; their campaigns accounted for nearly a third of all spending by climate groups on the platforms. Still, their campaigns remain the same in advertising the basic consequences and solutions to climate change, targeting women in AZ, GA, NC, PA, and WI. Also continuing to spend heavily on the platform is Third Way, which spent over $30k on their recent ad campaign promoting the clean energy chops of a dozen vulnerable House Democrats.
We identified a few groups running new pro-clean energy, pro-environment ads in the Midwest. The largest of these campaigns came from Progress Michigan, which launched what appears to be their biggest Meta ad campaign of the year so far, spending nearly $28k last week on ads largely focused on protecting the Great Lakes from pollution, supporting the state’s local farmers, and investing in clean energy production in rural Michigan.
Across Lake Michigan, IL CleanJobs is advertising the economic benefits of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the state’s new Climate & Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA). IL CleanJobs spent over $93k on Meta ads last year to help get the latter legislation signed into law, and now they’re advertising the electric vehicle rebates and energy bill credits that are coming to Illinoisans thanks to the new law. When it comes to the BIL, they’re arguing that it will help the state “take advantage of clean energy like solar and wind, providing reliable, affordable clean energy, even in extreme weather.”
It’s probably not a coincidence that IL CleanJobs is emphasizing clean energy affordability and emergency reliability since power company Ameren is simultaneously running Meta ads along those same lines. The company spent a whopping $148k on the platform opposing CEJA, and now they’re running vague ads claiming that “there’s too little energy supply to meet demand after reliable energy sources were taken offline quickly” and that “Families and businesses are paying the price” as a result.
Finally, Enbridge is also continuing to target Midwestern states, namely Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, with its ads lauding Line 5 and promising to invest in “renewable & low-carbon solutions” to achieve “#NetZero2050.” They’ve spent $127k on these ads in the past month.
Google + YouTube
Last week, Maine Affordable Energy doubled down on its YouTube campaign opposing the consumer buyout of the state’s two utilities; the utility-backed group grew its spending on the platform from $5,700 the previous week to a whopping $47,300 last week. Check out their ad, which targets Mainers older than 24:
Overall, here’s how much these groups spent on Google political ads last week:
Snapchat
Patagonia spent $400 on Snap ads promoting Latino Conservation Week, which took place last week. Otherwise, there were no new or ongoing political ad campaigns concerning climate change or energy on Snapchat. Overall, here’s how much groups have invested in the platform so far this year:
Climate & Energy Ads in the 2022 Elections
We identified just a couple of digital ad campaigns about energy from battleground midterm campaigns across the country.
CO-SEN: Michael Bennett is among the first Democratic U.S. Senate candidates to run ads about energy on Snapchat this cycle: “From increasing gas production to renewable energy, everything should be on the table.” He’s also running these ads on Meta platforms.
GA-SEN: Herschel Walker once again ran an ad attacking Raphael Warnock that might as well have come from the American Petroleum Institute: “Warnock is working to end American energy independence…voting to outlaw oil and gas leases on federal lands, and supportive of a ban on fracking…and to kill the Keystone Pipeline. Instead of begging our adversaries for oil and depleting our reserves, Warnock should be working to unleash America’s energy potential.”
Reaching Frontline Communities
Last week, Plastic Oceans spent just over $2k last week on Meta ads promoting their community organizing efforts. They’re advertising their global Blue Communities initiative, which is “empowering local action to create systemic change on a global scale.”
Tracking Climate Disinfo Online
This week, tracking partners found that more than 40 million people were exposed to climate misinformation on Twitter during the time period reviewed, an increase of 300 percent from last week's exposure levels. The content had over 94,000 engagements on Facebook, an increase of 25 percent from last week's exposure levels. The content had over 11,000,000 views on Telegram, an increase of more than 150 percent from last week's exposure levels.
The top narratives and themes are below. You can find our full report here.
The White House’s climate emergency is a leftist power grab
8,100,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter.
Over 29,000 engagements on Facebook.
Over 530,000 views on Telegram.
CNN staffer says network will turn climate change into the next COVID-19 crisis (2021 clip)
10,000,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter.
Over 140,000 views on Telegram.
John Kerry is a hypocrite who calls for action on climate change but then flies on private jets
11,000,000 human accounts exposed on Twitter.
Over 6,600 engagements on Facebook.
What’s trending organically?
Last week, the most engaged Facebook posts mentioning climate change, energy, and related terms far and away came from car meme page 1320 Videos, which spread misinformation about electric vehicles to its audience of over 5.8 million followers. After that, the most engaged post came from The White House, which took responsibility for the drop in gas prices and got 214k interactions. However, looking more closely at the data reveals a potentially problematic trend: nearly half of interactions are “Haha” reactions, and nearly another half are comments, most of which dunk on the post. This tells us that the virality of this particular post wasn’t because users were cheering the White House; they were mocking it.
The most engaged Facebook post about energy from a climate skeptic came from Sarah Palin, who’s running for Alaska’s at-large congressional district. The former governor made a post calling on the government to “drill, baby, drill,” which got over 30k interactions.
Overall, here’s how the most engaged content on Facebook breaks down:
On Instagram, the most engaged posts about climate or energy came from Bernie Sanders, who last week officially endorsed members of The Squad: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Pramila Jayapal, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar. The Daily Show also got about 118k interactions on the platform for mocking Fox News’ climate skepticism and transphobia.
We also noticed a fair amount of climate disinformation circulated on Instagram last week. A dramatic yet misleading claim about the collapse of plankton populations in the Atlantic Ocean got nearly 145k interactions across just two posts. On the other side of things, Dan Crenshaw found a way to tie transphobia with climate skepticism by echoing a GOP attack on Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine. He claimed that the Biden administration’s approach to transgender rights and climate change represents a “progression of the left from mere ‘tolerance’ and ‘compassion’ to outright advocacy of policy positions that are wildly unpopular, unscientific, and downright dangerous.” His post got over 114k interactions.
Finally, we’ll note that Kylie Jenner was the center of a fair amount of controversy on Instagram, particularly over her excessive private jet usage. We found that news of her 17-minute flights generated at least 273k interactions across seven Instagram posts, all of which sharply criticized her and other celebrities’ decadent travel habits.
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.