Two possibilities now loom over Keystone XL and, by extension, the energy industry. Neither one is good.
Possibility One: Rasmussen Reports was incorrect in stating that its survey finding of 61% support for the pipeline represents an all-time high. Wrong, because last June a Harris Poll found that 82% of respondents believe that Keystone is in the best national interest.
Consider the ramifications. The energy industry has pulled out every stop, outspending their adversaries on lobbyists, PR, advertising, television, and radio. A total expenditure by both sides in the tens of millions, elaborated on recently in Politico, may even be a somewhat conservative estimate once you start adding in the soft costs. The total spend on Keystone reportedly equals or exceeds the resources invested in the acid rain and Arctic drilling debates.
And what hath this mighty armada wrought? A 21% tailspin in less than a year!
Possibility Two: Rasmussen Reports was not incorrect. Not only is 61% the best result ever, TransCanada has enjoyed a recent 4% gain.
Alas, Possibility Two is just as ominous for the industry. Either way, we’re not just talking about majority approvals. We’re talking about demonstrable consensus. With such numbers, the industry should be able to steamroll its way toward Day One of construction, exerting irresistible pressure on Congress to exert irresistible pressure on President Obama to finally issue his approval ASAP.
To some extent, the logjam can be blamed on the current partisan contentiousness that stymies legislative initiative at every turn. “Given the level of support for the pipeline, if this was the D.C. of the Tip O'Neill era, it would have been horse-traded and wrapped up into a large transportation/infrastructure bill that would sail through both chambers and be signed by the President,” says Stefan Hankin, the founder and president of Lincoln Park Strategies.
Bottom line: the needle hasn’t moved, the trench warfare continues, and the anti-Keystone activists are undaunted. In fact, they’re exhilarated. Listen to Bill McKibben, a driving force behind 350.org, one of the NGOs arrayed on the anti-Keystone front. “Everyone is working together in a pretty unprecedented way,” says McKibben, and that’s “the greatest joy of the whole fight, since we’re badly going to need unity for all the battles against the fossil fuel industry to come.”
“Joy” is an odd but telling word to use in this context. But it is, after all, precisely what impassioned activists feel when they organize and speak to the world. Importantly, they’re also shrewd enough to speak directly to anyone who will listen, using the same traditional media as their adversaries and a great deal more of the social media to enlist mainstream support.
That’s called grassroots communications: mobilizing congressional constituents even as industry lobbyists focus on congressmen. In the process, the anti-Keystone minority imbibes the same passion, the same willingness to take action. Low poll numbers bother them nary a whit.
By contrast, 82% of the public may support Keystone, but to what effect? Most likely, that support is such that they won’t even bother mentioning it to their elected officials. If the industry has made a key mistake in the Keystone fracas, it’s in focusing their massive PR blitz on opinion elites and Beltway insiders. With all the TV and print ads targeting Washington, DC audiences, you’d think the pipeline is scheduled to run underneath K Street.
The industry strategy is called grass tops communication, and the tragedy of it is that the industry is squandering what should be an insuperable advantage. If they’d talk directly to that 82% or 61%, most Americans would do the lobbying for them.
“The challenge for the energy industry is that they don’t have the intensity,” says Hankins. “It is hard to mobilize supporters over an infrastructure project with which most Americans won't have a direct relationship.”
Yet there’s no reason why such a relationship couldn’t have been fostered, especially as the industry does have a compelling story that Main Street will understand. It’s about Keystone as the kind of energy infrastructure development that is sorely needed to remediate an aging pipeline system and reap the benefits of the new oil and gas production. Yet instead of that story, the recent focus, at least in the media, has been on the relative insignificance of Keystone’s job-creation potential.
The energy industry is well-advised to recalibrate strategy for the next big fight, and to remember what McKibben said – that “we’re badly going to need unity for all the battles against the fossil fuel industry to come.”
For McKibben’s side, Keystone has been invaluable regardless of outcome and, at the least, a learning experience for the environmentalists. This trench warfare bears the same relationship to the next energy controversy as World War I bore to World War II. After all the protracted carnage, it was training ground for future Rommels and Pattons
Time will tell if the energy industry joins the classroom. If nothing else, they’d do well to think about whose hearts and minds they really need to capture before they spend tens of millions more on a public affairs campaign.
Richard Levick, Esq., is Chairman and CEO of LEVICK, a global strategic communications firm.
