Ad parodied TransCanada CEO

by Brian Leubitz

With President Obama’s time running out for a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action group wanted to put some pressure on by advertising on the Tonight Show during the Presidential appearance. However, just before the show (and the ad) were to air, the DC NBC affiliate let the group know that they were not going to air the ad:

NBC has rejected an ad opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, despite running ads in favor of its construction. The climate group NextGen Climate Action says it was notified at the last minute Tuesday night that a Washington, D.C. NBC station rejected its ad, submitted for President Obama’s appearance on the Tonight Show. …

“After a careful review, it was determined that this ad violates our guidelines. We have communicated that to the advertiser,” a WRC spokesperson said.

According to NBC’s advertising guidelines, anything that appears to be “an attack of a personal nature, a direct attack on an individual business or a comment on a private dispute” can be considered unacceptable content.  Meanwhile, NBC has aired its share of pro-Keystone XL ads. Just this Sunday, a TransCanada-sponsored ad ran during Meet The Press that claimed tar sands oil is “cleaner” and would have “little impact” on climate change. (ThinkProgress)

Of course, TransCanada is claiming that the statements were all lies, but the facts remain to back up the claims. Any American jobs from KXL will be short-lived temporary gains, but the big winners will be the oil companies who will be able to feed the growing Chinese appetite for fossil fuels. Given that the shale oil set to be pumped down from Canada is dirtier, the additional hit to the climate would be staggering.

In the end, neither the science nor the economics of the KXL project are in the best interests of the American people, and so the proponents of the project are working to silence critics at every turn. The decision is now in the President’s lap, and we need to pressure him. NextGen Climate Action Tom Steyer, who incidentally seems to have some of his own political ambition and certainly has his own interests in stopping KXL, have been been doing just that. Time is running out to kill this thing, so perhaps the NBC station did them a favor with the free publicity.