Just got a tip from a reader that there are robocalls coming into Vermont from an organization called the Consumer Energy Alliance “touting all the jobs, energy security, and cheap gas prices which, in their view, strip mining for net-energy-loss tar sands oil and piping it from Canada to Texas will supposedly bring.”
The questions were nakedly persuasive, and also asked the gender of the recipient, and whether he was over 50.
The Consumer Energy Alliance is a classic “astroturf” group (i.e. industry-funded operation masquerading as a grassroots-type organization) previously known for lobbying to open up public lands in the US to oil exploration. Lots of references on the web link it to a long time corporate operative named Michael Gibson, but the links that backed that up are dead, so I can’t confirm.
So is this then a “push-poll?” A true push poll targets enough people to make a difference in overall public opinion, and that gets pricey – especially in a case like this, where this is likely a national call (why would Vermont specifically be targeted). This is why, when it comes from a politician, such a phony persuasion poll is probably message testing rather than a full-on push.
But in this case, who knows? There’s a lot of industry money tied up in this, and this sort of communication and message propagation seems to be all that this organization does. It wouldn’t shock to me to find out that this was a genuine push-poll, which means the scale of it must be massive. Anyone else get such a call?
A reminder from GMD pal Bill McKibben about what’s at stake with this issue (and if you aren’t familiar with the issue, click here to get caught up):
We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate.
You really do have to wonder at how they determined their sample pool!
The way the questions were worded, they can simply drop the responses that don’t support their agenda. The last one said something like “May we add your name to the list of supporters (of the tar-sands pipeline)…?” I suspect that, when I said ‘no’, I was simply dropped from the count.
So don’t expect to see any representation from this poll of how many oppose the pipeline!
Yes; it absolutely was a “push poll,” in the truest sense of the term.