Gore’s Climate Change Messaging: Which Solutions will Work?
Type: CNAS Commentary
April 15, 2008 — Last week Al Gore’s nonprofit organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, launched the “We Campaign,” a $300 million public awareness campaign aiming to move climate change up the nation’s priority list and increase constituent pressure on decision makers in Washington. However, oil companies, utility representatives, and a variety of other organizations have all recently run ads strikingly similar in content and advocating countless “solutions” to this set of problems. Gore’s campaign will be most effective if it combats this convolution by clarifying to the public which energy options it advocates – clean renewables like wind and solar – and which contribute the most to climate change.
The We Campaign’s launch occurs in the midst of several months when the public has been bombarded with news and messages on energy choices and how those choices affect climate change. Time magazine featured a cover story in late March that biofuels are indeed contributing directly to deforestation and other environmental degradation, and “dramatically accelerating global warming.” Next, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming brought oil executives up to the Hill for a wag of the finger. That night and over the following days, newscasts included footage of the hearings and interviews with OPEC representatives, with a general impression conveyed that oil and the oil industry are hurting the environment as well as citizens’ pocketbooks.
Yet during this energy-focused news week, oil companies actively advertised that their products are vital for energy security and, in some cases, that they are environmentally-conscious. For example, during network newscasts of the oil executive hearings, “The People of America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry,” a moniker of petroleum industry advocacy and research group API, ran ads declaring that its products can “secure America’s energy future.” This group, along with Exxon, Conoco Phillips, wind energy companies, nuclear policy advocates, and many, many other organizations have been running full-page ads in all the major newspapers for months, most of them declaring a different solution to the nation’s energy problems, climate change, or both. Worse, all these ads tend to look alike and often have nearly identical messages.
Al Gore’s organization also ran full-page newspaper ads and began running television commercials, but these ads are too similar to all the others streaming through the television, in newspapers, and online. The “We Campaign” website offers things that consumers can do and personal choices they can make to address climate change; many oil companies offer the same information on their websites, as do countless other sources. The Alliance for Climate Protection ads declare that “We can solve the climate crisis,” but the messaging from fossil fuel industries also gives the impression that we can use their products in a clean, low-carbon manner.
Hopefully one next step for this public education campaign will be to convey more honest assessments to people on the relative merit of the energy options they are being presented with, and how exactly those choices affect climate change. The Alliance for Climate Protection is explicit on its website that it advocates clean, renewable energy options such as solar and wind power. Some of this campaign’s $300 million would be well spent informing the public on the reasoning behind this preference compared to fossil fuel options, their value in combating climate change, what the public can do to promote production from these specific energy sources, and which other information and advertising to be skeptical of. Save for educating the public on specifically what the best energy and climate change solutions are, there is no real way for the public to differentiate Gore’s message from the messages of those his intentions oppose.
Related:Topic(s): Natural Resources + National Security = Natural Security
Project(s): Energy Security and Climate Change
