'This is the Super Bowl for climate change,' one consultant says. Greens plan Obama climate ad blitz

President Barack Obama’s new climate rule is getting a major push from his green allies, who plan to blitz the airwaves next week with the start of a summer-long campaign to champion the administration’s attack on carbon.

Obama’s fiercest critics, meanwhile, are largely holding their fire for now.


That means environmental, public health and religious groups may be waging a mostly one-sided publicity onslaught — at least in nationwide paid media — after the White House and the EPA unveil their proposal on Monday for cutting carbon emissions from existing power plants. The rule is the centerpiece of the president’s climate strategy.

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EPA’s proposal offers greens a rare chance to take the offensive and cheer Obama on, after years of prodding him for faster action and fighting to block projects like the Keystone XL pipeline. Groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters will mount a months-long organizing campaign to draw positive public comments on the rule and build support.

And one environmental group will kick off the publicity effort with a multimillion-dollar national cable television ad buy, according to a consultant familiar with the plans.

“This is the Super Bowl for climate change,” said the consultant, who would not identify the group. “The Republicans won’t act, won’t even admit it’s happening, and the president is using the full extent of his statutory authority to get this across the goal line. It’s a win for everyone who likes to breathe.”

The environmentalists will also have vocal allies in the White House and EPA, whose public statements on climate change in the past few days have echoed parts of the planned ad campaign.

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But no similarly broad offensive is yet in the works from the other side, according to groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. They said they’re waiting to see the specifics of the rule before deciding on any major ad buys — as well as any strategies for using the EPA rule against Democratic candidates.

Don’t think the opposition has given up, though, said ACCCE spokeswoman Laura Sheehan, whose group includes coal-heavy energy producers Southern Co., Duke Energy and American Electric Power.

“We’ve been engaged in a campaign against these regs for months and will continue to combat EPA overreach,” Sheehan said. “Expect our voice to only become louder in the days and months ahead.”

Other administration critics, like the National Mining Association, have been running more narrowly targeted ads attacking the rule. Those are appearing in coal-dependent states like Virginia, Arkansas and Colorado that are critical in the November elections.

Pro-EPA television ads coming next week from the environmental group will offer a “fierce defense” of the proposed carbon rules, according to the source involved in the planning. That seems to be a warning against any GOP-led efforts to defang EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, as some Republican leaders have vowed to do.

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White House spokesman Jay Carney similarly defended the soon-to-be announced rule during his press briefing Thursday, telling reporters that regulations “already set limits on arsenic, mercury and lead, but we let power plants release as much carbon pollution as they want.”

The ad campaign’s message is meant to be positive, the consultant said, and it won’t point to any particular members of Congress. The TV ads will followed by a “significant digital buy” of several hundred thousand dollars, the source said.

The greens could also put together a radio campaign in a handful of states with the same theme to follow the television spots, but nothing has been crafted thus far, the source said.

Meanwhile, a slew of green groups is getting together to set up a website for collecting comments to send to the EPA, and for field-organizing summertime events across the country in support of the rule. The groups are planning more than 300 “earned media” events to draw attention to support for the regulation in 37 states through August, the source said.

Separately, a “Climate Victory” campaign, spearheaded by Marcacci Communications, 350.org and Creative Action Network, is taking public submissions of World War II-style posters aimed at highlighting the strides the movement has made.

Plans for efforts throughout the summer are already in motion.

Groups including Organizing for Action, the NRDC, the Sierra Club, Environment America, the League of Conservation Voters and Interfaith Power & Light are holding a “national day of action” on June 21, the longest day of the year, to support solar power, clean energy and the fight against climate change, the organizations said. The efforts will be focused on local, grass-roots efforts to gather and educate people on using solar power.

Meanwhile, green group Earthjustice has hired a media consultant to organize appearances across the country and is planning a radio tour.

The Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of activist group the Hip Hop Caucus, said his group will attend civil-rights-oriented conferences this summer — such as those held by the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — to talk about the proposed rule. Yearwood is also planning meetings with black farmers, fraternities, sororities and churches on the issue, he said.

The Hip Hop Caucus will also add dates to its recent “Act on Climate” tour, said Yearwood, noting that a lot of power plants employ people in “communities of color.” He said his group “will be educating them about the health concerns that affect their community and also the transition from fossil fuels.”

That won’t be the only outreach effort with a religious component. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will spend the summer working with its bishops and followers “to make sure that they understand what these are about and find ways to support the administration,” said Stacy Martin, the church’s director of advocacy.

“This is an issue that has for a long time been a concern to the faith community,” she added.

Despite the momentarily uneven playing field, greens still see themselves as the underdog.

Environmentalists will have a “loud and clear voice of support for these proposals,” said Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice. But he said the debate is “a classic case of the richest companies in the world – the fossil fuel companies, oil, gas and coal – having substantially more money than our groups and any groups allied with us.” He expects to see a lot of TV ads from the coal industry.

But so far, plans from industry are limited.

The Chamber of Commerce earned some free publicity this week by releasing a report that said EPA’s climate efforts will cost the U.S. economy an average of $51 billion a year. The Institute for Energy Research, a group supported by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, is also planning to push back against the climate rule on similar grounds, “based on the fact that these types of policies threaten the reliability and affordability of America’s electric supply,” spokesman Chris Warren said.

“Because these rules will prematurely close our coal-fired power plants, there will be unnecessary stress on the rest of our energy supply, such as natural gas,” Warren said.

IER’s political partner – the American Energy Alliance – will probably run ads targeting Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) on the proposed rule and may run ads in the Colorado and Alaska Senate races. Those are the three races AEA has focused on so far, and “if we do come out with another round it will be on EPA,” an official with the alliance said.

Others are holding off until they see the rule. Among them is the Partnership for a Better Energy Future, a group that includes a wide range of energy, manufacturing and other industry groups.

“The Partnership has engaged EPA constructively in this process and is planning to wait and see if the rule reflects that engagement before making any concrete decisions about response activities, including ads,” said the group’s spokesman, Chad Kolton. “But given EPA’s recent record of disregarding input from companies and consumers, we have begun to plan for ads if needed to make our concerns heard loud and clear when this debate moves to the next stage.”

The National Association of Manufacturers, a partnership member that is traditionally an attack dog on EPA regulations, is also holding off on big ad buys next week.

“Ads are absolutely on the table, but a lot will depend on the content of the proposal,” said NAM spokesman James Hennigan.

Another member of the group, the National Mining Association, has already made a splash with a radio ad claiming that the administration’s power plant regulations could double electric bills and drive up wholesale electricity costs by 80 percent. Green groups have asked radio stations to pull the ad, arguing that it is deliberately misleading.

The ad will run through June in Virginia, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the mining association added digital ads to the campaign last week, NMA spokesman Luke Popovich said. But it doesn’t have plans for further ads yet, the group said.

Greens don’t expect industry to take the rule lying down, and they’re expecting a wide range of arguments attacking the rule.

The “other side is trying out all sorts of arguments, which is a sign that they acknowledge that this is not simple,” said David Goldston, the NRDC’s director of government affairs. Issues range from the science behind climate change to economic arguments to raising questions about international cooperation, he said.

“But I think what you’re seeing is facing a landscape where it’s not clear to them even how they’re going to win on this anymore,” he said. “And I think that’s why they’re going to be throwing everything at the wall, and that’s why we’re prepared for that, and so is the White House.”